Inundation Maps for NSW Inland Floodplain Wetlands

Under the NSW DCCEEW Water for the Environment Program the distribution and extent of inundation is monitored in large inland floodplain wetland assets which are targeted for environmental flow delivery and located in the NSW portion of the Murray-Darling Basin: Gwydir wetlands, Lowbidgee floodplain, Lower Lachlan wetlands, Macquarie Marshes, Barmah-Millewa Forest and Narran Lakes (monitored since 2022-2023). Inundation maps available have been derived from image observations sourced from the satellite data sources of Landsat (30m pixel) and Sentinel-2 (10m pixel) for the period July 2014-June 2025. Image observations are automatically downloaded by NSW DCCEEW from the USGS (Unites State Geological Survey’s Earth Explorer website (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov ) and the Copernicus Sentinel Open Access Hub (https://scihub.copernicus.eu/dhus/#/home ) as orthorectified images. NSW DCCEEW process these images to standardised surface reflectance (Flood et al. 2013). Image observations with high cloud coverage (&gt;50%) are not considered because they cannot be processed. 

The inundation mapping procedure prior to 2025 uses a modified version of Thomas et. al (2015) which is a method to map inundation in vegetated floodplain wetlands using an integrated spectral response to water and vigorous vegetation. From each satellite image observation NSW DCCEEW automatically generates a water index (Fisher et al. 2016) and the NDVI vegetation index. These indices are used to allocate inundated pixels to classes of open water, mixed water and vegetation, and dense vegetation cover that was inundated (Thomas et al. 2015). A process of pixel recoding is conducted to produce each inundation map. 

Inundation mapping since 2025 has begun to follow the Automated Inundation Monitoring (AIM) method developed by Heath et. al (2024). Inundation mapping areas are derived from Sentinel 2 imagery by integrating topographic, hydrological, and vegetation based indicators. 

For both methods, inundation classes are merged and allocated a value of one (1) whilst all other pixels are allocated a value of zero (0). Second, ancillary data is then used to identify irrigation infrastructure to do two things: locate inundated pixels within off-river storages (ORS) by recoding to a value of (2) and to remove cropped areas that have similar spectral properties to wetland vegetation by coding the pixels to a value of zero (0). Third, for observation dates affected by cloud shadow, which is often incorrectly detected as water, pixels are manually reclassified as cloud shadow by recoding them to a value of three (3). The final inundation classes are inundated (1), off-river storages with water (ors) (2), cloud shadow (3), and not inundated (0). Final inundation maps are clipped to the inland floodplain wetland boundaries.

The naming format of the files are:
Wetland_date _sensor_inundation1_ors2_cloud3.tif or Wetland_path_date _sensor_inundation1_ors2_cloud3.tif

Wetland:
bm = Barmah Millewa floodplain
gw = Gwydir floodplain
lachlan = Lachlan floodplain
lo = Lowbidgee floodplain
mm = Macquarie Marshes floodplain

Path: Specific to the Lachlan
Date: Satellite image date processed
Sensor: Sensor type- l7 (Landsat7; l8 (Landsat 8); s2 (Sentinel2)
Inundation1: Inundated
ors2: Off-River Storage with water
cloud3: Cloud shadow (in filename if present)

References:
Fisher, A., Flood, N. and Danaher, T. (2016). Comparing Landsat water index methods for automated water classification in eastern Australia. Remote Sensing of Environment, 175, 167-182.

Flood, N., Danaher, T., Gill, T., &amp; Gillingham, S. (2013). An operational scheme for deriving standardised surface reflectance from Landsat TM/ETM+ and SPOT HRG imagery for eastern Australia. Remote Sensing, 5, 83–109.

Heath, J. T., Grimmett, L., Gopalakrishnan, T., Thomas, R. F., &amp; Lenehan, J. (2024). Integrating Sentinel 2 Imagery with High-Resolution Elevation Data for Automated Inundation Monitoring in Vegetated Floodplain Wetlands. Remote Sensing, 16(13), 2434. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16132434

Thomas, R. F., Kingsford, R. T., Lu, Y., Cox, S. J., Sims, N. C. and Hunter, S. J., (2015). Mapping inundation in the heterogeneous floodplain wetlands of the Macquarie Marshes, using Landsat Thematic Mapper. Journal of Hydrology 524, 194-213.

Organization: NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water