Improving wetland knowledge
and developing tools to enhance protection and restoration of Europe’s wetlands. Focused on biodiversity.

The European Wetland Map (‘EWM’) is one of the WET HORIZONS project outcomes. This map significantly enhances the state-of-knowledge on wetlands across Europe by locating, assessing and merging the latest geospatial data. It combines various data from Geographic Information Systems (GIS) on wetland types and their distribution on mineral soil in coastal environments and floodplains, as well as for a large variety of peatlands in one most comprehensive, easily accessible resource.

Users can freely download the European Wetland Map for their own analyses. Politicians can find out where current land use and infrastructure might be at increasing risk by flooding in times of climate change and adjust decisions accordingly. Land users and landowners can recognize where their land overlaps with peatlands and wetlands – even if wetland features are no longer visible due to drainage, as in many of Europe’s former extensive floodplains and peatlands.

A vector dataset on the geographical distribution of the wetlands considered is available on a country basis in an ArcGIS geodatabase as well as a country-specific high resolution Geo-TIFF collection (grid size: 1 arcsecond).

For more information read our press release.