Exploitable results
Observatory nature protection (ONP)
ONP began with a more-or-less exclusive focus on regional users, but the work has evolved into a broader consideration of what should constitute a GMES nature service, and how this should fit with regional, national, transnational and European habitat monitoring scenarios. ONP has found that a product-only approach is not necessarily the only possible interface with the user community, and has accordingly proposed a three-tier service model which encompasses a generic data service (part of a future 'core' service?), an advisory service, and a product service. The specific ecosystem themes forming the practical demonstration work are a partial illustration of the product service. Product interoperability, indicator assessments, operational scenarios and recommending 'nature' content to European-level classification nomenclatures have served to illustrate an advisory service. Although still largely conceptual, a methodology framework has been defined for ongoing work, with strong support for area frame sampling as the basis for a future harmonised Earth observation (EO)-based monitoring programme, together with a holistic view of how a GMES nature service might work, supporting both bottom-up reporting (via regional and national agencies), as well as top-down.
Observatory water and soil water (OWS-W)
OWS-W aimed at developing stable, repetitive and quality-assured methods that integrate and optimise the use of EO derived information, i.e. land use / land cover data with customised thematic, spatial and temporal resolution, and ancillary geospatial data as input to catchment and surface water modelling, addressing the Water Framework Directive. Key focus have been water pressure by irrigation practices, water pollution and source apportionment modelling. All services consolidated within the frame of Geoland have been or are going to be implemented and rolled out in ESAs GSE Land project in Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Czech, Poland, Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, Portugal, France, and Spain. Also, various national programmes or projects will further explore the services.
Observatory water and soil soil (OWS-S)
The soil observatory aimed at the development of pre-operational soil erosion risk assessment services which are in line with current EU policies such as the recently adopted by the Commission EU Thematic Strategy for soil protection. The developed services are based in the use of EO data, image analysis techniques and GIS modeling. More specifically, the main objectives of the soil observatory were:
- to benchmark existing soil erosion models such as the USLE and Pesera in order to develop pre-operational high and low cost methodologies for the identification of high erosion risk areas.
- to investigate how the selected models are affected by the vegetation phenology and the way it changes over the year.
The developed services resulted in identifying areas of high potential soil erosion risk in a number of study areas in Greece and Italy. Such information is extremely important for erosion prevention, as it allows for the identification of the proper location and type of erosion prevention measures needed to be taken by the decision makers.
Observatory spatial planning (OSP) - Putting urban growth on the map
The objective of OSP has been to introduce innovative EO-derived land cover products into spatial planning procedures and methods at European, national and sub-national level. The land cover products were combined with socioeconomic information and integrated in GIS procedures and models. The actual results comprised maps, statistics, indicators, typologies and scenarios allowing for systematic and geospatial explicit territorial analysis.
Products and services have been developed in nine European countries and toolsets have been installed for testing and benchmarking. With the project results, the European Commission, the Member States and regions have significant information and tools for spatial planning at their disposal, enabling spatial planners to efficiently implement and assess actions.
Core service generic land cover (CSL)
The Geoland CSL is aimed at serving the needs of the European Commission and Member States on harmonised, topical and high quality basic information on land cover and its change. A large variety of different technical options have been analysed with regard to their scientific soundness, technical feasibility under different European environmental conditions, and economic viability. The consolidated portfolio comprises 21 classes, interoperable with Corine; the minimum mapping unit is 1 ha in artificial areas and 5 ha in rural areas, respectively.
The CSL concept has been accepted by EEA and its member states in July 2005 as the basis of the GMES core service land monitoring (CSLM). Its realisation for a wall-to-wall coverage of Europe is currently prepared by the GMES implementation group land monitoring, while the discussion on details is still ongoing.
Observatory food security and crop monitoring (OFM)
Geoland OFM aimed at developing methods and tools for a future GMES crop monitoring service for providing near-real time information on crop yield outlook and estimated cultivated areas at the scale of provinces and countries as basis for regional crop production estimates. The EC and FAO require such information on the major centres of production and in regions with food security problems, in particular for regions with high climatic risk of crop failures.
The current Mars-stat and Mars-food systems of JRC have been identified as the basis for a future GMES service. Geoland-OFM has tested and cross-validated several alternative procedures under data rich conditions in European countries. Three methods for estimating crop-specific acreage have been tested. They use LR or MR images and require different types input data sets due to differences in approach. All methods provide their acreage estimates some time after harvest. All methods gave good results in regions with homogeneous land cover: large fields, few crops, while results varied under mixed fragmented land use patterns. The available data, costs and type of region will determine the choice of best method.
Geoland-OFM work on yield estimation was organised as a contest between existing methods for generating yield indicators based remote sensing and modelling and combined methods. These yield indicators in the form of vegetation indices and modelled crop biomass are updated monthly and are used as predictor of the mean regional yield. The overall conclusion of the yield estimation contest was that the performance of the various methods varied over the regions and years. Validation requires long continuous time series of data, to which some remote sensing based methods could not comply. Early in the season none of the yield predictions based on any of the indicators is really better than the extrapolated trend. Later in the season the best predictions came from the modelled indicators of the existing MARS system. Remote sensing methods did better in Spain than more northern countries. In some cases these predictions can be improved by better model calibration.
In a second stage, the OFM methods have been applied in operational automated data processing chains to wheat and maize crops in the North China plain. The key risk factors for the various OFM products are:
- the availability of EO data on a long-term basis
- lack of uniform and consistent ancillary data
- the lack of suitable regression tools in yield forecasting
- The wide choice in products may be confusing for users
- the standard OFM-products designed for continent-wide crop monitoring may not address the information needs of the user for specific situations.
Observatory global land cover and forest change (OLF)
OLF has been focusing on two priority areas identified in the GMES/EC action plan: Africa and Boreal Eurasia. Automated processing chains have been conceived, implemented and tested to generate a number of environmental indicators (seasonal variations of surface water, burned surfaces and fires, phenology of vegetation, land cover change) at a 10-day frequency. These products are currently delivered in near real time to African countries by the VGT4Africa specific support action.
A software tool, SPADA, was developed to allow combination of these indicators as well as other space-based information and to identify areas with anomalies in terms of land cover change or conditions. Targeted users of OLF are public services of the European Commission, the Member States and partner countries (Russia and African countries) and international institutions.
Observatory natural carbon fluxes (ONC)
The objective of the land carbon component of Geoland was to develop a multimodel carbon accounting system accounting for weather and climate variability, coupled with a EO data assimilation system. This new tool will support Kyoto (and post-Kyoto) reporting activities.
The main achievement consisted in performing the greening of the land surface operational platforms of meteorological services (ECMWF and Météo-France). Namely, a CO2 responsive capability was introduced in the land surface models and the possibility to simulate the vegetation biomass and leaf area index. ECMWF is now ready to simulate the terrestrial carbon flux at a global scale with a spatial resolution of 25 km. The modelled carbon flux is fully consistent with the modelled water flux, soil moisture, vegetation biomass and leaf area index.
Demonstration products with a spatial resolution of 40 km can be found on http://wwwlsceorchidee.cea.fr/.
A demonstration EO data assimilation system was implemented over southwestern France, and a simplified version was successfully applied at a global scale. Future activities will focus on the representation of carbon storage and soil respiration in the modeling platforms of meteorological services, on the development of the operational use of EO data assimilation, on the improvement of the spatial resolution over Europe (1-10 km), and on linking the products with forest and soil carbon inventory activities in Europe.
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