Patterns of wetting and drying are major determinants of local and landscape-scale patterns of species diversity in river and wetland ecosystems. Tracking these cycles is therefore important for understanding species distribution patterns and population dynamics of aquatic biota. Doing so at meaningful scales however requires the ability to track not just individual waterbodies through time, but waterbodies throughout the entire landscape. This goal can only be achieved using remote sensing approaches. Here we employed the Landsat Tasseled Cap transformation as a ‘wetness’ index to track wetland dynamics across the greater Melbourne region over a 31-year period. Our results demonstrate significant temporal variation in the number of wetlands and total area of wetland habitat over time – trends that are strongly linked to interannual climatic cycles. These data will be used to explore temporal dynamics in the occurrence of aquatic organisms across permanent, intermittent and more ephemeral wetland types. The ultimate goal is to establish links between climate-variability, wetland hydrology, and species occurrence patterns that can be used by Melbourne Water to assist with long-term planning within the context of a drying climate and rapidly expanding urban footprint.