Supporting sound environmental management
ECOPOTENTIAL aims to support effective monitoring and understanding of ecosystem conditions, processes, dynamics and changes, fully accounting for the wide spectrum of interactions between society, geosphere, biosphere and climate.
A new research publication, Earth Observation for Environmental Management: Science for post 2020 Environmental targets Insights from Earth Observation of Protected Areas was presented at the Science-Policy Brief meeting at the European Parliament, Brussels on 27 September 2018.
The event was co-organised by ECOPOTENTIAL, IUCN and UNEP-WCMC to highlight the use of Earth observations for improving nature conservation policies.
Download the report here.
The Earth Observation Data for Ecosystem Monitoring tool
The Earth Observation Data for Ecosystem Monitoring tool (EODESM) accessible through ECOPOTENTIAL Community Portal
EODESM is a tool developed under the Horizon 2020 ECOPOTENTIAL project that automatically classifies land cover according to the Food and Agricultural Organizations’ (FAO) Land Cover Classification System (LCCS2) taxonomy from environmental variables, enabling users to detect changes in vegetation, soil moisture, and other environmental variables.
An ECOPOTENTIAL Community Portal based on GEOSS Mirrors and GEOSS Widgets technologies was developed. Through a new graph-widget the user can explore ecosystems, related protected areas and select one of the available storylines. Then, the user can run the EODESM model to compute land cover changes relevant for the selected storyline and protected area. The result is visualized as a map providing knowledge useful for ecosystem management.
Several GEO members were involved in the project, including: GEOSS EVOLVE that provided the general architectural framework for the generation of knowledge from data as a potential enhancement of the GEOSS Platform; the GEOSS Platform operations team provided the technical support for the implementation of the pilot; and EuroGEO and GEO ECO provided the liaison with the European ecosystem and biodiversity community in particular through the members involved and leading the H2020 ECOPOTENTIAL project.
Global Ecosystem and Environment Observation Analysis Research Cooperation (GEOARC)
Earth observation data
to support global
change studies
The Global Ecosystem and Environment Observation Analysis Research Cooperation (GEOARC), produces openly available reports and environmental baseline data to support global change studies.
As part of GEOSS, GEOARC produces Annual Reports on Remote Sensing Monitoring of Global Ecosystem and Environment. During 2016 to 2019, the cropland and yield monitoring, the global carbon source and sink monitoring, the “Belt and Road” regional ecological environment monitoring have been conducted based on multi-source Earth observation satellites service especially the FY series and the TanSat, supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China.
Employing multi-source, multi-scale, multi-temporal satellite data, several quantitative products and reports have been generated. The reports about Regional Ecosystem Trends along the Belt and Road, the Supply Situation of Maize, Rice, Wheat and Soybean, the Temporal Dynamics and Spatial Distribution of Global Carbon Source and Sink were released. These datasets, information and knowledge can support the monitoring of several sustainable development goals (SDGs).
GEOARC was initially launched in 2012 to strengthen global ecosystem and environment monitoring by improving the use of remote sensing tools. Using GEO’s Multi-source Synergized Remote Sensing provided coordinated Earth observations from satellites and helped to integrate them with ground-based and other in situ measurements. The initiative is generating reliable, accurate, timely and sustained datasets for the public for free. GEOARC supports developing countries to overcome the high cost of processing satellite data.
GEOARC makes a positive contribution with analysis-ready data for policy-making and knowledge services to the international communities.