Hans von Sonntag | 4.12. 2024
In the face of accelerating environmental degradation, advanced technologies are stepping in to empower conservationists. Earth Observation (EO) – using satellite data for environmental monitoring – has become indispensable in preserving biodiversity, combating climate change, and managing natural resources. The collaboration between the European Space Agency’s Stakeholder Engagement Facility (ESA SEF) and Eurosite, Europe’s network for conservation practitioners, exemplifies this transformative potential.
In the Autumn of 2024, ESA SEF and Eurosite launched EO Supporting Nature Conservation, a three-part webinar series to bridge the gap between conservation management and cutting-edge satellite technologies. This initiative highlights EO’s immense opportunities in habitat mapping, agricultural policy monitoring (CAP), and carbon stock assessment. Geoff Smith, founder of the EO consultancy Specto Natura and a speaker in the series, calls the webinars “a perfect gateway between the two communities of conservation management and environmental monitoring with Earth Observation.”
EO in Action: Transforming Conservation Efforts
Earth Observation is revolutionising how ecosystems are monitored, understood, and restored. By providing accurate, large-scale, and near-real-time data, EO addresses key challenges in conservation, enabling conservationists to make informed decisions grounded in robust, spatially explicit data.
The Wetland and Peatland EO Case
Wetlands are dynamic ecosystems essential for water purification, flood control, and biodiversity support. Yet many countries lack accurate inventories, making monitoring degradation challenging or fulfilling international reporting requirements like the Ramsar Convention. Satellites such as the Copernicus Sentinel missions provide high spatial resolution, frequent observations critical for:
- Mapping wetland extents and seasonal changes.
- Monitoring vegetation health and water presence.
- Evaluating restoration success over time.
Peatlands can be parts of wetlands and are distinct, wet habitats with second-to-none superpowers. They cover just 3–4% of the Earth’s surface yet store nearly 30% of its soil carbon. Despite their critical role in climate regulation and biodiversity, these ecosystems are severely threatened by drainage, land-use change, and wildfires. EO plays a pivotal role in their conservation by:
- Mapping peatland extent using spectral and radar data.
- Monitoring hydrological conditions, such as water table depth.
- Assessing vegetation health and carbon sequestration potential.
By integrating satellite data with ground observations, EO supports precise planning and monitoring of restoration projects, helping turn degraded peatlands back into long-lasting carbon sinks.
Collaboration for Impact
The ESA SEF and Eurosite partnership exemplifies how technology and conservation expertise can come together to address global environmental challenges. The webinars foster an interactive exchange between remote sensing experts and conservation professionals, enabling both communities to explore opportunities and constraints in applying EO.
Reflecting on this collaboration, Geoff Smith highlights a pivotal challenge: “The EO sector is producing huge amounts of data suitable for conservation management, but that data deluge is off-putting to small teams without the skills or time to exploit it. Services that take the heavy lifting off end users need to be developed and deliver domain-specific actionable information.”
He advocates for shifting the perspective on habitat mapping. Traditional ‘paper habitat maps’ often fail to reflect the dynamic, high-resolution insights that EO provides. “EO can regularly deliver spatially detailed information across sites, regions, and even continents, offering a rich set of biophysical properties that call for a new approach to habitat mapping,” he notes and concludes optimistically: “The future for EO and conservation is bright. Rather than just mapping the status of an environment at a fixed point in the past, we can now monitor environmental processes and the impacts of policy changes in near-real time.”