1. Dr Cróna Hodges Research Officer Earth Observation Group, Aberystwyth University Y Plas, Machynlleth 20 th May 2014 crh18@aber.ac.uk http://cobwebproject.eu/ COBWEB: Helping to map vegetation Work with Aberystwyth University

2. Presentation Outline Existing work –Earth Observation –Land Cover and Habitat Mapping? How COBWEB can help Going forward - what we can give back

3. Earth Observation © iStockphoto (2014)

4. Vegetation and Land Cover: Why does it matter? Important at every scale –Global: Understanding global agricultural resource, forest extent, distribution of sensitive habitat types, understanding climate change… –Regional: Mapping that informs policy for sensitive habitat management, monitoring biodiversity, understanding how vegetation changes… –Local: Protecting sensitive species, conservation management, our impact on the local environment…

5. Global land cover products Include ‘GLC Share’ launched recently

6. Regional land cover products Europe-wide and national datasets

7. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right (2013) ©Countryside Council for Wales. All rights reserved. Local Vegetation and Land Cover Research

8. How COBWEB can help

10. In the field we need to know: –Our location, –Basemapping, –Information about what we are looking at, and –Photographs to support our field notes (preferably). Mobile apps can be a valuable data collection tool

11. Going forward - What we can give back Data that COBWEB can work with to meet data quality and data management objectives Data that will be of interest to other academics and stakeholders Field observations – descriptions/data about vegetation and habitat type Geotagged photographs of vegetation and habitat types …

12. THANK YOU crh18@aber.ac.uk