Forest Habitat Change Dynamics in a Riparian Wetland

Our study aims at monitoring ecosystem dynamics in the Szigetköz Danube floodplain (Hungary), where the wetland communities have been seriously affected by the abrupt hydrological changes after the Danube-diversion in 1992. Wetland habitats were mapped in the last years for a chosen area, based on a comparable use of archived analogue and digital aerial images and available silvicultural and botanical inventories. During the object-based image analysis the classification was mainly based on texture measures. The resulting map time series show habitat borders for each year and present the changes separately for each class. The method is suitable for the characterization of spatial and temporal structure of wetland land cover in a realistic way.