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Harmonization of the Land Use and Land Cover datasets in Europe.

GISAT is a member of consortia awarded a research contract within FP7 framework named HLANDATA – Creation of value-added services based on Harmonized Land Use and Land Cover Datasets. Three years contract was awarded under the ICT PSP envelope for Geographic Information and is led by Gobierno de Navarra.

Despite many land monitoring activities are currently in place both on national and European level (including the GMES and INSPIRE ones), European wide land monitoring framework still suffer from lack of harmonization model. The HLANDATA project aims at making a step forward in overcoming this barrier, fostering the use of the Land Use and Land Cover geographic data at a European level, through the creation of value-added European services. The main objective of the project is to demonstrate the feasible European level harmonization of the Land Use and Land Cover datasets taking into account both the data categorization and the data models, for any of their possible uses and users, through the development of user oriented value-added services.

In order to achieve this objective and to validate the results, web services will be used for the implementation of 3 pilot projects in 3 different application areas. GISAT is active in pilot dedicated to ‘Harmonized and Interoperable Land Information Systems’ with focus on land cover / land use based land accounting services. Activities carried out on this pilot implementation under HLANDATA project is also planned to support national actions towards Czech national land monitoring program.

Check the HLANDATA website (www.hlandata.eu) to get more information about the project.

(June2010) The United States is in danger of losing its ability to monitor key climate variables from satellites, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

The country’s Earth-observing satellite program has been underfunded for a decade, and the impact of the lack of funds is finally hitting home. The GAO report found that capabilities originally slated for two new Earth-monitoring programs, NPOESS and GOES-R, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Defense have been cut and adequate plans to replace them do not exist.

Meanwhile, up until six months ago, NASA had 15 functional Earth-sensing satellites. Two of them went down in the past year, and of the remaining 13, 12 are past their design lifetimes. Only seven may be functional by 2016, said Waleed Abdalati, a longtime NASA satellite scientist now teaching at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Taken together, American scientists will soon find themselves without the ability to monitor changes to key Earth systems at a time when such measurements could help determine the paths of the world’s energy and transportation systems.

“Can you imagine if we’ve passed the apex of our Earth-observing capability right at a time when we realize that, ‘Hey, we need to understand what’s going on’?” said Abdalati. “We’re talking about less than half the capability in the coming five years than we’ve had in the previous five years.”

While President Obama’s 2011 budget has gone partway to restoring money for Earth observations, a decade of neglect has left the nation’s agencies — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the US Geological Survey — without the resources they need to do the job.

Despite this, the agencies put together a consortium to come up with a coordinated strategy for Earth observations, the United States Group on Earth Observations. The group readied a report on the state of the nation’s Earth-observation capabilities, but it’s been stuck in review for the past year.

The GAO’s very first recommendation is that this report be released to the public.

“We’ve been told that it proposes continuing observations in 15 to 20 areas. We’ve been told that it doesn’t involve costs and schedules,” said GAO auditor David Powner, lead author of the GAO report. “We think that what’s really important is that we need to get these initial findings and reports. Everyone is telling us that there are good things to build off of in there.”

The National Academy of Sciences also created a survey of satellite capability, which highlighted 15 important missions. The group of scientists called for increasing NASA’s $1.4 billion Earth-science budget by $500 million. Without that cash infusion, American Earth-observation capabilities will decline.

“The extraordinary U.S. foundation of global observations is at great risk,” the report concludes. “Between 2006 and the end of the decade, the number of operating missions will decrease dramatically, and the number of operating sensors and instruments on NASA spacecraft, most of which are well past their nominal lifetimes, will decrease by some 40 percent.”

Obama’s current budget plans have the NASA Earth-science budget reaching $1.65 billion by 2014, but the damage to the base of the country’s capabilities during the Bush years continue to hurt current operations.

“It’s no secret that Earth science did suffer at NASA and perhaps at NOAA under the Bush administration,” Abdalati said. “Now, there are certainly efforts to reclaim that capability.”

But American scientists are now playing from behind trying to replace or patch up the infrastructure that lets us understand what’s going on with our planet. There are structural problems, too. Climate observation missions have very particular requirements, said climate scientist Inez Fung of the University of California at Berkeley.

“If you want to do climate change, you need a uniform set of data so that you can compare changes through time,” Fung said. “It’s a really tough problem.”

That means researchers need continuity in the data they receive from satellites, which requires long-term planning and long-term planning requires consistent funding.

“Long-term planning for the federal government is really difficult,” Powner said. “There are some good folks within NOAA, NASA and DOD who are very concerned about the long-term outlook. But it’s tough to compete, especially when there is a downturn and smaller budgets. It’s always that near-term focus.”

And so the United States may lose its ability to understand what’s happening on and to the planet.

“The agencies will not be able to provide key environmental data that are important for sustaining climate and space weather measurements,” the GAO report concludes.

For Abdalati, the ability to observe Earth from space is fundamental to U.S. interests.

“If we just step back as a society and ask, ‘How important is it that we understand how and why our Earth is changing?’ Regardless of where you fall on man-made influences to climate change, we can all agree that there is a need to figure out what’s going on and what’s coming.”

Source

Participants at the Living Planet Symposium have been hearing about ESA’s most recently launched mission, CryoSat-2. In orbit for almost three months, the satellite is in excellent health with scientists very encouraged by the first ice-thickness data presented at the symposium.

Prof. Duncan Wingham, Lead Investigator for the CryoSat mission, stated, “The satellite is in very good shape – exceeding in-orbit specifications, the ground segment software is fine, the system of data distribution looks good and we are excited by the quality of data being received.

“It is extremely rewarding to see the theoretical idea we had for an ice mission 10 years ago now coming to fruition.”

CryoSat-2 was launched last April, so the satellite and instruments are still being commissioned, a process that will continue until the autumn. Nevertheless, scientists and users are very excited by the first data, which already show the fine detail of the ice surface.

These data also demonstrate the added coverage that CryoSat-2 delivers. The satellite’s orbit brings it closer to the poles than earlier observation satellites, covering an additional 4.6 million sq km – an area larger than all 27 European Union member states put together.

CryoSat is Europe’s first mission dedicated to monitoring Earth’s ice fields. The satellite carries the first radar altimeter of its kind to overcome the difficulties of measuring icy surfaces.

Its primary payload, the sophisticated SAR/Interferometric Radar Altimeter (SIRAL), can measure the thickness of sea ice down to centimetres and monitor changes in the ice sheets on land, particularly around the edges where icebergs are calved from the vast ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.

Together with information on ice extent, these measurements will show how the volume of Earth’s ice is changing and lead to a better understanding of the relationship between ice and climate change.

“We have had some hiccups with the science data processor – after all, a radar like this has never flown in space before. But we’ve shaken most of these out now and the results are looking very good,” said CryoSat-2 Project Manager Richard Francis.

“In particular the resolution of this system is amazing. We can see lots of detail in this track over part of Antarctica, made on the day the SIRAL instrument was first switched on.”

It was also announced today that orbit data from the Doppler Orbit and Radio Positioning Integration by Satellite (DORIS) radio receiver will be released in early July.

DORIS is a tracking system carried by CryoSat-2 to detect and measure the Doppler shift on signals broadcast from a network of radio beacons around the world. These signals are used for orbit determination, down to millimetre level and essential for accurately measuring the height of the ice surface.

Since the data from DORIS have been validated and shown to be excellent, they are being released to the community before the end of commissioning.

Now half-way through commissioning, CryoSat-2 is clearly well on track to delivering the precise data on ice-thickness change that are much-needed to provide a better insight into what is happening to Earth’s ice cover as a result of climate change.

Source

16th June 2010


In this Issue
1. Highlight: Regulation on the GMES programme and its initial operations 2011-2013
2. The use of Earth Observation satellites in events of volcanic eruptions
3. Earth Observation satellites for monitoring oil spill
4. GMES helps measuring the cost of biodiversity losses in coastal Mediterranean wetlands
5. European Parliament’s resolution on EU agriculture and climate change
6. European Parliament’s resolution on Commission’s White paper on adapting to climate change
7. GMES and Africa Action Plan – draft version seen as a baseline
8. Commission’s analysis of options for increasing carbon cutting in the EU
9. Additional FP7 EU funding to support GMES
GMES Project Corner:
10. Participation of GMES projects in the 2010 Toulouse Space Show

1. Regulation on the GMES programme and its initial operations 2011-2013

The European Parliament’s final draft report on the Commission proposal for a regulation on GMES programme and its initial operations 2011-2013 was unanimously approved by the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) on 11 May 2010. In this approved report, representing the achievement of extensive discussions between the Parliament and the Council of Ministers, MEPs included a provision of open access to all satellite data, except security sensitive data. As a next step in the co-decision procedure, the vote by the whole Parliament on the final draft report is scheduled for 16 June 2010.

Read More…

2. The use of Earth Observation satellites in events of volcanic eruptions

Following the eruptions of the Islandic volcano Eyjafjallajoekull, which started on 20 March 2010, various Earth Observation satellites were monitoring the spread of the volcanic ash and trace gases that affected seriously the European air traffic. For instances data acquired by the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the ESA’s Envisat satellite, the EUMETSAT Meteosat and MetOp satellites as well as the instrument GOME-2 (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) on MetOp-A were used for producing a series of volcano products. The pre-operational atmosphere and emergency response services of GMES were also activated for enhancing the coordination of the global response to the volcanic eruption. Moreover, SAFER supported the International Charter Space and Major Disasters by monitoring the development of the volcano on a daily basis.

Read More…

3. Earth Observation satellites for monitoring oil spill

After the explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, ESA’s Envisat satellite, as well as other SAR satellites, was continuously providing radar imagery of the oil spilling, in the framework of the International Charter Space and Major Disasters. Using advanced processing methods that merge the satellite data with information on surface roughness and current flow, scientists were able to detect changes in direction of the oil spill. Lastly, the results of the undertaken observation show that the upcoming Sentinel-1 SAR instrument of GMES will be very useful for monitoring oil spill thanks to its enhanced measuring capabilities.

Read More…

4. GMES helps measuring the cost of biodiversity losses in coastal Mediterranean wetlands

By the end of April 2010, the European Environment Agency published its report 3/2010, which presents how land and ecosystem accounting techniques can be used to describe and monitor the consequences of biodiversity loss in the coastal wetlands of the Mediterranean. In order to be the most effective, accounting approaches must be implemented at different scales. GMES, in particular, can support in the development of macro accounts. The report is intended to cover the study of wetlands, but the above-mentioned tools are applicable to all types of ecosystem approach to policy and management.

Read More…

5. European Parliament’s resolution on EU agriculture and climate change

On 5 May 2010 the European Parliament adopted a non-legislative resolution on EU agriculture and climate change, presented by MEP rapporteur Stéphane Le Foll (France, S&D), from the Agriculture and Rural development (AGRI) Committee. The Parliament’s resolution notes that agriculture is contributing to climate change, as one of the main sources of two majors Greenhouse gases (GHGs), nitrous oxide and methane. The Parliament points out how agriculture can contribute to global warming mitigation efforts and it calls on the Commission to promote a more sustainable agricultural model in line with all the aims of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Read More…

6. European Parliament’s resolution on Commission’s White Paper on adapting to climate change

On May 6 2010 the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the Commission White paper of 1 April 2009 “Adapting to Climate Change: towards a European framework for action”. The draft resolution had been prepared by MEP Vittorio Prodi (Italy, S&D) and presented to the Environment (ENVI) committee on 23 March 2010. The resolution defines a number of objectives, including the development of the knowledge base, the focus on infrastructure, energy and transport. The European Parliament finally calls on the Commission to report to the Parliament by 2012 on progress made to implement the above-mentioned White Paper.

Read More…

7. GMES and Africa Action Plan – draft version seen as a baseline

The GMES and Africa Action Plan has been drafted after one year of work during which African and European experts collaborated in paving the way to the long term coordination of Earth Observation (EO) activities in the African continent. A public consultation on the drafted document, seen as a baseline, is currently open until 31 July 2010. The final Action Plan shall be submitted for adoption at the 3rd Africa-EU Summit which will take place in Lybia by the end of 2010. GMES and Africa strategy is a unique opportunity to mobilize, coordinate and leverage the efficient use of EO data and applications with relevance for Africa.

Read More…

8. Commission’s analysis of options for increasing carbon cutting in the EU

On 26 May 2010 the European Commission (DG Climate Action) presented a paper analysing what it would take for the EU to move from the binding 20% to a desirable 30% emissions reduction from 1990 levels by 2020. On the basis of the analysis of the costs, benefits and options for such a moving as well as the risk of carbon leakage, the Commission concludes that increasing the target to 30% would be both affordable and technically feasible provided that the required conditions are met.

Read More…

9. Additional FP 7 EU funding to support GMES

The European Commission (DG Industry and Enterprise), in cooperation with the Research Executive Agency (REA), selected 108 projects from the total 732 proposals that applied for the third call for proposals under the space and security themes of the FP7. In the space domain short-listed project proposals address, among others, the GMES programme and its services. In the recently published Commission’s brochure ‘Desire for space’ 27 space research projects are featured there, including 13 projects dedicated to the GMES downstream services.

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GMES Projects’ Corner+

10. Participation of GMES projects in the 2010 Toulouse Space Show

GMES was presented at the second edition of the “International Week on Space Applications” that took place on 8-11 June 2010 in Toulouse, France. During the 3rd International Space Applications conference (a key event of the Toulouse Space Show), several presentations on GMES were given, notably by representatives of the European Commission, while in parallel, a GMES exhibition stand hosting the EU-funded projects that are developing the pre-operational services of GMES was open throughout the whole week.

Read More…

The European Commission has initiated negotiations to sign research contracts worth EUR 324 million with 108 successful space and security research consortia.

They represent strategic domains for the EU’s competitiveness and contribute to the implementation of a range of policy objectives, including the fights against terrorism and climate change, and the furthering of sustainable development, industrial renewal, economic recovery, leading to the implementation of the 2020 strategy.

As a global actor and major space power, the EU relies on space and security research for strong border protection and enhanced environmental monitoring. Therefore funds also support the continued development of Europe’s Global Monitoring system for Environment and Security (GMES).

European Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani, Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, said: “In a time of crisis, strategic investments are essential for sustainable future growth. Security is a pre-requisite for business, and space is full of endless possibilities. This type of research is at the heart of the industrial renewal that Europe needs. It demonstrates the added value of European investments in high-end technology for innovation, and as a means to dealing more effectively with the major challenges that confront us.”

In cooperation with the Research Executive Agency (REA), 108 successful project proposals have been short-listed from amongst 732 proposals received in the third of six planned calls for proposals under the Space and Security themes of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7). They comprise 68 space and 40 security research projects: EUR 114 million for the FP7 space theme, and EUR 210 million for the FP7 security theme.

In the space domain, the short-listed Earth observation projects include support for the EU’s efforts to fight climate change by monitoring deforestation in Africa, whilst in the area of space exploration, research is set to improve the accuracy and robustness of spacecraft when landing on other planets. International cooperation has increased in space research, in particular with the United States, with American Universities and Research Centres, and major public research institutions such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) participating in a total of 15 proposals. The space domain also sees a high participation rate of 20 percent of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), compared to the FP7 average of 16 percent SME participation.

In the security domain, the short-listed projects include two large demonstration projects targeted at urban mass transportation and maritime border security, alongside projects furthering exchange of information to fight organised crime, mitigation of chemical, biological radiological and nuclear threats, and actions against money laundering, and counterfeit medicines. International cooperation is also strong in security research, with 40 project proposals bringing with them a total of 550 partners from 36 countries.

Throughout FP7 (2007-2013), EUR 1.4 billion and EUR 1.35 billion have been reserved for space and security research, respectively. With the third call, the number of space research projects is set to rise to 114, and the number of security projects to reach 130.

In July 2010, the European Commission foresees the publishing of the fourth FP7 space and security calls for proposals. Reflecting the political importance given to strategic R&D investment, a positive funding trend is anticipated.

Source: Eurasia Review

(May2010) Interoute will provide a secure private IPVPN connecting 13 European Space Agency sites with bandwidth from 1.5Mbps to 500Mbps

The European Space Agency (ESA), Europe’s gateway to space, and Interoute, owner operator of Europe’s largest next-generation network, have signed an agreement with ESA to provide a new IP Wide Area Network (WAN) connecting the Earth Observation (EO) Payload Data Systems sites across Europe and Canada. [1]

The ESA Earth Observation satellites monitor the natural world gaining valuable insight into the impact of climate change, melting ice, wild fires, and deforestation among other natural phenomena. The advanced Wide Area Network from Interoute will help ESA distribute, store and protect this valuable data. ESA needed to rationalise and enhance its existing connection capabilities, to connect the various EO Data Centres and the main IT platforms for data access and distribution. To meet ESA’s requirements, Interoute has offered a secure private IPVPN connecting the 13 ESA sites to a single performing platform: Interoute MPLS backbone.

Interoute’s next generation network will provide ESA with a secure and scalable environment ensuring the consolidation of its disparate data networks, large cost savings and an improved operational efficiency through one central reporting point for all WAN-based issues. Interoute’s solution includes Internet connectivity (1.2 Gbps access shared by all sites) with a fully redundant design, secured access through firewalls and denial-of-service (DDoS) protection.

M. Eugenia Forcada-Arregui, head of EOP Ground Segment Strategy Management Office at ESA, commented: “The existing EO Data Circulation and Dissemination Networks are intended to support the ESA Payload Data Ground Segment during the mission operations. An efficient and secure distribution network with very large bandwidth is essential to effectively gather, archive and distribute the large amount of data from the European satellite missions related with Earth Observation, to coordinate around 15 ground facilities throughout Europe and cooperate with most European ground-segment operators.”

J. Antonio Rodríguez-Vázquez, head of ESRIN ICT Services & Evolution Section, added: “We needed a European partner with outstanding network capacity and availability, which could assist us with an expert and dedicated team, delivering a fast response to address our IT challenges. We found such a partner in Interoute.”

Gareth Williams, CEO at Interoute, declared: “Interoute is proud to be involved in this significant international project for such a prestigious customer as the European Space Agency. Earth Observation data has a critical importance for science and society, and we are privileged to contribute to this mission by putting our next generation network, expertise and people at ESA’s service to create a fast, secure and reliable connection for data management and distribution in Europe and beyond.”

About ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. ESA is an international organisation with 18 Member States. By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, it can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country. ESA’s job is to draw up the European space programme and carry it through. ESA’s programmes are designed to find out more about Earth, its immediate space environment, our Solar System and the Universe, as well as to develop satellite-based technologies and services, and to promote European industries. ESA also works closely with space organisations outside Europe. There are around 2000 staff working for ESA, from all the Member States and include scientists, engineers, information technology specialists and administrative personnel. Countries belonging to ESA: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Canada takes part in some projects under a Cooperation agreement. Hungary, Romania, Poland, Estonia and Slovenia are ‘European Cooperating States’. Other countries have signed cooperation agreements with ESA.

About Interoute

Interoute is the owner operator of Europe’s most advanced and densely connected voice and data network, encompassing over 55,000 km of lit fibre with 8 hosting data centres and 32 colocation centres. Its full-service next generation network serves international enterprises from a broad range of sectors including aerospace, automotive, finance, pharmaceutical and retail, plus every major European incumbent, as well as the major operators of North America, East and South Asia, governments, universities and research agencies. These organisations find Interoute the ideal partner for hosting content, providing wholesale bandwidth and transit services, corporate connectivity or creating new services. With established operations throughout mainland Europe, North America and Dubai, Interoute also owns and operates dense city networks throughout Europe’s major business centres. More than €1 billion in e-commerce transactions flows through its data centres each day, making Interoute a key part of Europe’s Digital Supply Chain.

[1] 3 sites in Italy, 1 in Spain, 2 in France, 1 in UK, 2 in Germany, 1 in Norway, 1 in Sweden, 1 in Finland and 1 in Canada. The 3 sites in the Nordic countries are located at the same latitude of the Arctic Circle.

Source

PlanetObserver, leading supplier of satellite images in natural colours, announces the launch of a new version of its global digital Earth satellite imagery dataset with a resolution of 15 meter per pixel.

Processed from data collected from the civil observation satellite Landsat 7 ETM+, this dataset which offers a truly global coverage of the planet has been upgraded since its first release in 2008.

The new version of the 15-meter global satellite imagery dataset features an upgraded colour balance, reprocessed on all continents, in order to match perfectly the true beauty of planet Earth. Cloud coverage reduction is another major improvement, with a particular focus on African and South American tropical areas.

PlanetObserver Earth dataset comes as a standard off-the-shelf product, available in different data formats tuned specifically for today’s professional applications. From uncompressed GEOTIFF to TIFF-JPEG, ECW or JPEG2000 formats, this product constitutes the new standard for global Earth imagery, which combines beauty, reality and quality.

PlanetObserver global Earth imagery constitutes the perfect resource for IT applications, 2D and 3D navigation and simulation solutions, web mapping, print and film, museographic applications (interactive animations, thematic exhibitions ), etc.

About PlanetObserver

Founded in 1989, the Clermont-Ferrand based company PlanetObserver specializes in satellite imagery processing and in the production of global natural true colour Earth imagery datasets. PlanetObserver imagery is widely used in many application sectors ranging from IT applications, cartography and web mapping, special events, museographic applications to the media sector. For more information, visit www.planetobserver.com

Contact
PlanetObserver
Tel. (+33) 04 73 44 19 00 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (+33) 04 73 44 19 00 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Email : msat@planetobserver.com

(MAY2010) It is with great pleasure that we announce you a new product in the world of low resolution Earth observation data, the Metop-AVHRR 10-daily composites (MA10).

All information on the MA10 product can be found on the website

The MA10 products are available free of charge for non-commercial use and can be ordered via the on-line catalogue.

We thank all our partners, especially EUMETSAT, the MARS unit of JRC and the Belgian Science Policy, and hope that this new product will make a valuable contribution to your research.

More info VITO
and Metop-AVHRR 10-daily composites

Environmental Satellites: Strategy Needed to Sustain Critical Climate and Space Weather Measurements. GAO-10-456 April 27, 2010

Environmental satellites provide data on the earth and its space environment that are used for forecasting the weather, measuring variations in climate over time, and predicting space weather. In planning for the next generation of these satellites, federal agencies originally sought to fulfill weather, climate, and space weather requirements. However, in 2006, federal agencies restructured two key satellite acquisitions, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R series (GOES-R). This involved removing key climate and space weather instruments. GAO was asked to (1) assess plans for restoring the capabilities that were removed from the two key satellite acquisitions, (2) evaluate federal efforts to establish a strategy for the long-term provision of satellite-provided climate data, and (3) evaluate federal efforts to establish a strategy for the longterm provision of satellite-provided space weather data. To do so, GAO analyzed agency plans and reports. …

BQ. For full text of article, visit the GAO website here

Source

At the 18th Commonwealth Forestry Conference in Edinburgh, a new service specifically tailored to help in the fight to conserve global forests was launched. DMCii’s Global Forest Monitoring service uses satellite imagery to produce easily-understood maps of forest cover change. Uniquely, the service’s wide-area forest surveys can be updated annually, monthly – or more often still for areas judged most at risk – delivering the timely data necessary for operational management.

The world’s forests form a significant stock of carbon, which is being released as CO2 as forests are impacted by human intervention. The tropical rainforests hold 80% of forest carbon and the destruction of these is responsible for around 20% of anthropogenic carbon emissions. Among the subjects under discussion during the Conference is an UN-led initiative called REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), which aims to place a value on intact forests by paying governments to prevent their destruction.

However REDD+ requires reliable and timely information on the state of the forests. Satellite imagery is the only effective way of mapping such vast areas on a regular basis, but it can still take a long while for individual satellites to build up a complete regional picture, especially as tropical rainforests are often covered by clouds. In the past, forest maps could only be updated every five to 10 years, leaving them of limited practical use.

DMCii’s Global Forest Monitoring service is based around a constellation of six satellites known as the Disaster Monitoring Constellation which work together to provide rapid mapping services. Independently owned but collectively coordinated, the satellites have a joint daily repeat imaging capability for anywhere in the world, meaning that even cloudy areas can be imaged frequently enough to achieve full coverage.

Information derived from the satellites is used to provide maps of forest/non-forest regions, clear cut areas, logging roads and forest degradation. The service is also intended as a means of training and building capacity in the use and processing of satellite data, deriving information maps from data and interpretation of forest maps.

“Our new Global Forest Monitoring service is derived from our work partnering with governments and institutions on a number of existing forest initiatives,” said Paul Stephens, DMCii Sales and Marketing Director. “This experience has taught us that high-frequency satellite surveys for operational forest monitoring are required for adequate forest management. With survey gaps of more than six months, forest degradation becomes difficult to detect, and authorities need up-to-date information to target ground surveys. The need for regular information is clearly there – countries without operational forest monitoring programmes will be refused entry to the REDD+ process.”

Deforestation in the Amazon Basin. The Red areas indicate vegetation, and lighter areas show where forest has been systematically cleared. Image from UK-DMC ©SSTL

Forest change map produced from satellite images. The Yellow, Orange and Red areas in the centre image show year-on-year forest loss due to deforestation and degradation

About DMC International Imaging Ltd

DMC International Imaging Ltd (DMCii) is a UK based supplier of remote sensing data products and services for international Earth Observation (EO) markets. DMCii supplies programmed and archived optical satellite imagery provided by the multi-satellite Disaster Monitoring Constellation. DMCii’s data is now used in a wide variety of commercial and government applications including agriculture, forestry and environmental mapping.

In partnership with the British National Space Centre (BNSC) and the other Disaster Monitoring Constellation member nations (Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey and Spain), DMCii works with the International Charter: ‘Space and Major Disasters’ to provide free satellite imagery for humanitarian use in the event of major international disasters such as tsunami, hurricanes, fires and flooding.

DMCii was formed in October 2004 and is a subsidiary of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), the world leader in small satellite technology. SSTL designed and built the Disaster Monitoring Constellation with the support of the BNSC and in conjunction with the Disaster Monitoring Constellation member nations Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey and Spain.
www.dmcii.com

Contact
Paul Stephens
Sales & Marketing Director, DMC International Imaging Ltd.
Email: p.stephens@dmcii.com
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