ИСТИНА

During southward migration various species of waders spend long periods using mudflats as migration feeding areas. Most of the vast mudflats on the west coast of Kamchatka are associated with estuaries. The largest of these, which are important wader stopovers, are the estuaries of the Penzhina-Talovka and Khairusovo-Belogolovaya rivers. The latter was only explored for waders for the first time in 2010. Therefore a comprehensive assessment of all mudflats on the west coast of Kamchatka to detect other potentially suitable mudflats for waders is a key priority. Mudflats and sandflats are easily detected on satellite images taken during low tide. For our work, we used satellite images from Landsat 7 and Landsat 8. These have rather high resolution (30 m per pixel) and sufficient channels for colour synthesis. We used channels 1 (Blue), 4 (NIR 1) and 5 (SWIR 2) for Landsat 7 and the similar channels 6, 5 and 2 for Landsat 8. It is also important for us that the coverage area of these satellites includes the whole of the Kamchatka peninsula and that there is rather large archive available for free on the http://www.usgs.gov/. To process the images we used programs Scanex Image Processor 4.0 and Mapinfo 8.0. The largest mudflats on the west coast of Kamchatka are in the estuaries of the Khairusovo-Belogolovaya (43 km2), Penzhina-Talovka (36 km2), Moroshechnaya (14 km2), Tigil (9.2 km2), and Voyampolka (6 km2). There are also several lagoons in the southern part of the western coast that are potentially suitable for waders. The topography and structure of the mudflats in the Khairusovo-Belogolovaya and Moroshechnaya estuaries are not constant. They are dynamic and this can easily be seen in the satellite images from year to year. This dynamism requires study to determine the stability of these habitats and their impact on bird migration. Moreover it is necessary to consider the possibility of designating parts of these estuaries as Specially Protected Natural Areas.