A faulty image-processing system overstated wetland recovery across 4.6 million hectares (11.4 million acres) of Argentina, helping direct ARS 38 billion (about €25 million) in grants to provinces ranked as environmental standouts. The Federal Marsh Recovery Office confirmed on Tuesday that it had suspended its annual scorecard after a recalculation produced negative wetland areas in parts of the country.
The failure was traced to a software patch that caused the platform to reuse an outdated calibration file for satellite images. A technical review found that dry grassland and some cropped fields had repeatedly been counted as recovering wetland vegetation, inflating scores over two reporting cycles.
The figures shaped the 2025 ranking of 14 provinces and influenced grants for restoration work, field monitoring and drainage controls. The office has not said how much money may have been misdirected, but it confirmed that six of the top-ranked provinces received 72% of the fund’s first round.
How the score went wrong
The problem surfaced on 28 October, when a routine software update made the public dashboard recalculate its maps and return impossible results. Technicians at the Pampa Wetlands Institute, which checks environmental data for provincial agencies, compared the new outputs with archived satellite images and found the same false recovery pattern in earlier reports.
Klara M. Wojciechowski, a remote-sensing researcher who led the institute’s technical review, said the error was not a small adjustment. “The system painted dry ground as wetland recovery, year after year. On the map, it looked like a restoration success; on the ground, some of those plots had not changed,” she said.
Argentina’s 23 provinces and the autonomous capital have separate land-management responsibilities, while federal grants reward projects that meet national targets. That made the ranking unusually consequential: provinces scoring well could use the figures to support applications for more funding, while lower-ranked administrations risked losing out.
Provinces demand a recount
The office said it would publish corrected scores by 18 December and pause any unpaid grants tied solely to the ranking. Director Max Leuschke said projects already under way would be reviewed individually. “We will not ask a province to stop useful work because a map was wrong,” he said, “but no further payment will rely on an unverified score.”
Andrea Vila, a field ecologist who checked sample sites near Santa Fe, said the mismatch was visible in places where the platform reported expanding marsh plants but field teams found dry pasture. She said the result had been especially troubling because local agencies used the scorecard to describe progress to residents and provincial lawmakers.
The office has asked each province to submit ground measurements and project records for a fresh comparison. Two provincial administrations have already challenged their positions, while researchers say the corrected ranking could alter the distribution of the remaining ARS 11 billion in grants. The office expects its full technical review to take several weeks.
