Loss of Wetlands in the Southern Venetian Plain: a Geo-Historical Perspective

The protection of wetlands has become an important part of ecosystem planning in most countries. In some countries the restoration of lost wetlands or even the creation of new wetlands is considered essential for ecosystem functions. The first step in wetlands and ecosystem planning is mapping the present and, hopefully, the historic geographic distribution of wetlands. For any large area mapping wetlands today is performed through the analysis of remotely sensed imagery, such as airborne or satellite-based imagery. Mapping historic wetlands is problematic as remote sensing from airborne platforms has only existed since the early part of the 20th century. However, some historic cartographic products do contain wetlands or wetland-like features that can serve as a proxy for historic wetlands distributions. In this research, both historic maps (1882) and recent (2015) aerial imagery were used to map the geographic distribution of wetlands in the Padova province in northern Italy. A change analysis of wetlands revealed a dramatic loss of wetlands in this province. The present-day wetlands amount to only 3.4% of the wetlands present in 1882. The current distribution of wetlands is, in large part, very different from the historic distribution as few historic wetlands remain today, while scattered new wetlands are a result of anthropogenic processes.