Monitoring Europe‘s ecosystem capital The role of Copernicus and other geographic information Working party meeting, Luxembourg, 2. March 2015 Stefan Jensen Head of EEA data management group Supported by Jan-Erik Petersen, Ecosystem accounts project manager Hans Dufourmont, Copernicus project manager

What is the EU policy context? EU 7 th Environmental Action Programme Objective 1: preserve ‘natural capital’ Objective 5: build environmental knowledge base EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020: Action 2 Mapping and Assessment of ecosystems & their services (->MAES) Integrate natural capital into accounting and reporting systems Environment Knowledge Community at EU level to support knowledge base for 7EAP (jointly working on Knowledge Innovation Projects – KIPs)

Ecosystem capital: GENERATINGGENERATING MAES working definition Focus of talk What is ‘natural capital‘ ?

What is the challenge? Many different & separate & expensive data gathering exercises but not really tailored towards measuring ecosystems LUCAS (ground observation) COPERNICUS (satellite images) Farm Structure Survey (agricultural census) Corine Land Cover Natura 2000 data Biodiversity monitoring Forest statistics Water FD reporting …

How to set up a better functioning system? Tasks identified for ‘KIP’ on natural capital: Identify the required information Develop a shared sampling frame and an integrated system Set joint minimum data standards (e.g. on geo-referencing) Establish a shared data platform Integrate all available data and make sure new data fit into the syst em

Development of solid system of representative information about natural ecosystems, to support monitoring of the natural capital, will require synthesis of various datasets with information coming from different sources, such as interpretation of satellite imagery, statistical data about human activities and in-situ data For more accurate results, combination of different data sources in a common spatial reference framework is necessary (triangulation) Analysing natural capital trends by combining different data sources Satellite data (e.g. Copernicus HRLs) Geo-referenced statistical data An evolved LUCAS and other in-situ tools..

What is Copernicus ? EARTH OBSERVATION SYSTEMS (space, airborne, in-situ) PUBLIC POLICIES (Environment & Security) Information Services User Needs (policy driven) Copernicus is a joint initiative of the EC and ESA. Its objective is to provide relevant information services to policy-makers and other users, particularly in relation to environment and security

…added-value products 6 services use Earth Observation data to make… Sentinels contributing missions in-situ

9 …added-value products 6 services use Earth Observation data to make… Sentinels contributing missions in-situ National/Commercial

Delegated tasks to the EEA A. Copernicus land monitoring service: Pan-European Continental Component HR + VHR image mosaics + bio-geophysical parameters Production of 5 thematic high resolution layers (imperviousness, forests, grasslands, wet lands, small water bodies) Production of HRL Green Linear features Set up of a daily European snow & ice cover service Providing land cover and land cover change information at Pan-European scale B. Copernicus land monitoring service: Local Component Riparian Zones mapping Natura 2000 sites: evolution of LC/LU + Threats Coastal zone monitoring Urban Atlas TBD… C. Dissemination + archiving + cataloguing Management of the portal: land.copernicus.eu D. Cross-service in situ coordination Improve access to national/regional in situ data (CORDA) and maintain pan-European Reference data (EU-DEM, EU-hydro, contribute to LUCAS) Coordinate access to in situ for multiple services in need of access to the same in situ data Partnership agreements with (umbrella) data providers EurogeoSurveys, EuroGOOS…) Support the EC with in situ topics. Total budget Copernicus Land & in situ: 87 M€

Products & Services High Resolution Layers Corine Land Cover & change

Copernicus land service pan-European & local components Sealed soil Forest type Tree cover density Grassland Wetlands Water bodies Corine Land Cover 2012 Image mosaics LC Biodiversity Urban Atlas

portal land.copernicus.eu land.copernicus.eu

Starting point: Input satellite imagery: IRS & SPOT IRS over London RE over Avignon

High Resolution Layer: Degree of sealed soil (buildings, roads…) (Brno) IMD and VHR over Paris online

HRL Forest: Tree cover density & Forest type (CZ: Brno)

High Resolution Layer Permanent Grasslands (Nantes, FR)

High Resolution Layers Permanent Wetlands + Water Bodies (Danube, RO) (Rhone, FR)

CLC + Imperviousness + Forests + Grasslands + Wetlands + Water CLC and HRLs combined

Local component Riparian zones Urban Atlas

Edinburgh (UK) UA2012 Urban Atlas online

CLC versus Urban Atlas: Prague example Corine Land Cover 2006Urban Atlas 2006 CLC versus Urban Atlas

Local component: Biodiversity: riparian zones

Delineation of Riparian Zones Source: JRC report: Riparian zones: where green and blue networks meet

In situ requirements for Land Cover EU-DEM online

As products of Copernicus programme evolve and can provide additional detail and parameters, what is the crucial in-situ information required for validation? It is necessary to balance the needs for in-situ information collection with the associated costs and reliability of the gained data LUCAS, as the only pan-European in-situ survey, plays key role in developing better knowledge base for natural capital It is important to ensure complementarity between LUCAS and data collection exercises such as Copernicus, as well as national land cover/use collection exercises (Eagle project) Requirements to key input sources

increase number of sample points for complex land cover classes such as grassland and wetlands and less frequent classes increase number of LUCAS sample points to have a representative coverage and/or use national inventories to complement harmonisation of definitions for integration with national inventories (forest, crop) adapt monitoring to requirements for Copernicus product validation Some more future technical challenges

Thank you for your attention The European environment - state and outlook 2015 An integrated assessment of the European environment Launched on 3 March 2015 – eea.europa.eu/soer eea.europa.eu/soer