Fast-Tracking urban sprawl
Gisat is a member of the European service provider network mapping urban sprawl and soil sealing for Europe by 2008 in challenging project awarded by the European Environment Agency (EEA).
Starting May 2007, a European service provider network led by Infoterra GmbH will map built-up areas and soil sealing for Europe. By 2008, the consortium will cover 5.8 mio square kilometres at 20 m resolution for the reference year of 2006.
This challenging project has recently been awarded by the European Environment Agency (EEA) as one of the first seamless pan-European geo-information services within the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) initiative of the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The service provider network consists of GeoVille GmbH (Austria), GISAT s.r.o. (Czech Republic), Metria (Sweden), Planetek Italia srl. (Italy), Tragsatec SA (Spain), and is led by Infoterra GmbH (Germany); gathering essential expertise from all over Europe.
Gisat makes it REAL
REmote sensing identification and monitoring of Abandoned Land project aims to explore potential of the state-of-the-art remote sensing techniques for monitoring of land abandonment in the Czech Republic.
The process of land abandonment has become widespread in the last decades in all CEEC reflecting substantial political and economical changes in this period. Nowadays, it represent a serious issue and if not solved in time, the abandonment of productive agricultural lands would further grow. These lands would then gradually degrade together with their cultural landscape, soils will lose their productive potential, and jobs would be lost with consequent further migrations and further land degradation in a vicious circle that would deepen the social and economic problems of these regions. Besides the major social and economical impact, the process of land abandonment can have also serious ecological consequences.
Sustainable use and management of abandoned areas and prevention of abandonement land area enlargement is one of the policy targets both on European [e.g. Agro-Environmental Regulation, Council Regulation (EEC) No 2078/92, Rural Development Regulation, Council Regulation (EEC) No 1257/99] and national level (e.g. Biodiversity Strategy of Czech Republic [MŽP,2005], Post-accession Rural Policy 2004 – 2013 [MZE, 2005]). Nevertheless, the assessment of the policy strategies requires clear measures based on the figures on status and evolution of abandoned land area. Unfortunately, there are currently no actual statistical data available on the extent of land abandonment so only rough estimates are used (e.g. total area of abandoned land about 300 000 ha, that is 7 percent of the total agricultural area (Ministry of Agriculture, 2001).
The project aims to develop and test new methodology for identification and monitoring of abandoned land via the state-of-the-art remote sensing techniques. Two pilot areas are to be used for demonstration of technically and economically viable solution using object-based classification combining three basic strategies for abandoned land monitoring: spectral (hyperspectral), textural and temporal (both long term and seasonal).
The project is done under the support of the EUPRO programme of Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic in the frame of the ERA-STAR GMES Pilot Project “Brownfields” led by INDRA, Spain.
Gisat has landed in GSE Land
Gisat joins the ESA GMES GSE Land project as the service provider partner.
GSE Land is a project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) within the European GMES initiative – a joint approach of ESA and the European Commission.
The project responds to a number of European directives and policies and aims to support users across Europe in their efforts of fulfilling their obligations arising from these new developments. In particular in Czech Republic, GSE Land services will address support of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the Urban Environment Thematic Strategy (UTS) and the regulations related to the Thematic Strategy on Soil Protection (STS).
GSE Land joins the three proceeding ESA GSE projects that had already worked on land applications and brought these to a status of pre-maturity during the GSE Stage-1 programme:
- SAGE addressing water pollution, water abstraction by irrigation, agri-environmental as well as soil sealing indicators
- GMES Urban Services (GUS) providing urban mapping and monitoring services
- CoastWatch (land part) supporting an integrated coastal zone management
The consortia and their skills have been merged in order to provide a joint portfolio of mature GSE Land Information Services. GSE Land is led by Infoterra GmbH and conducted in close conjunction with numerous complementary activities within other GMES projects.
(Source Gisat)