The salt pans of the National Park Neusiedler See - Seewinkel in Burgenland, Austria, are the only Central European wetlands located in the steppe ecoregion with important functions for biodiversity. Due to their shallow depth, the salt pans ("Salzlacken") are subject to a strong seasonality in their water budget and are sensitive to dry and wet periods. Additionally, due to agricultural water use and drainage, a large number of salt pans have dried out over the last two centuries.

In FEMOWINKEL, we propose to map the dynamics of salt pans using the complete Landsat 5 and 8 archive to develop a time series of water extent from 1985 to 2021. Using this unique time series, we will further use data-driven modelling to identify factors (e.g. climate, land use) driving the inter and intra-annual dynamics of salt pan extent.

Funding

StartClim 2021/22, opens an external URL in a new window

Project Duration

November 2021 – December 2022

CLIMERS staff involved

Henri Schauer
Emanuel Büechi
Wouter Dorigo