Automatic Identification of Heavily Modified Water Bodies Using Digital Topographic and Land Cover Data

This paper describes the development of a screening system for automatic detection of heavily modified water bodies, as part of the European Union Water Framework implementation process. The input Data consists of digital river geometry and land use data. The algorithm assigns a fuzzy membership to the class of heavily modified water bodies, based on the geometry of a river and the class of land use on both sides of the river bed. A comparison of the results with the German river habitat assessment shows a high consistency between the screening method described in this paper and the much more detailed river habitat assessment.