Wetlands provide crucial benefits to humans so that monitoring their ecological status is key for ensuring the continuity of these benefits. Wetland monitoring, inventory, assessment, and surveillance inform wetland management practices and policies. Therefore, effective wetland management requires effective and continuous wetland monitoring based on hypotheses emerged from inventory and assessment. Wetlands change over space and time due to natural variability and human impacts, such as overexploitation of land and water resources, habitat fragmentation, water diversion, and invasive species. Contemporary ecology, palaeoecology, and remote sensing all contribute to wetland monitoring of ecological character and to the identification of baselines of historical, ‘natural’ conditions. This chapter summarises how physical and biological wetland components are monitored and discusses the processes of wetland monitoring, inventory, assessment, and surveillance and associated opportunities and challenges in the context of the Ramsar Convention and broad scientific and management efforts.
