Issues of global, regional and national land monitoring have recently received significant attention in a number of international processes on the political level and in societal debates such as those related to the post-Kyoto climate agreement and citizen science. They require scientific and technical input and are offering opportunities to improving relevance, acceptance, and approaches to operationalize global and regional land monitoring integrating satellite and in-situ datasets. Active research is ongoing at the WU remote sensing chair group to provide solutions for policy needs and the increasing role of earth observation in monitoring, reporting and verification (UN Conventions, REDD, GEO, national level) and for the harmonization and validation for large-area land assessments.
Technological progress and methodological sophistication alone is often not sufficient to implement land assessments effectively. Our related research efforts put particular emphasis on fostering more saliency and legitimacy of land observations, and on communicating and advocating the roles, potentials and limitation on using earth observations. Activities are structured, both conceptually and methodologically, to build a bridge between societal needs, policy requirements, and scientific progress and consensus. It involves engagement with prominent political processes, the gathering of observation requirements, providing technical policy advice, the definition of observation strategies and priorities, evolving international technical consensus on critical issues, the specification of implementation guidelines, and working on dedicated case studies fostering technical progress, operations and applications. These activities are progressing in major thematic areas: standards for land characterization and methods for accuracy assessment, and global land observations and applications and land change monitoring. The activities are closely embedded to evolve land cover observations as part of GEOSS (global land cover task, forest carbon tracking) and to support the UN climate convention efforts (UNFCCC) for research and systematic observations of Essential Climate Variables (ECV’s) and for reducing emissions from deforestation (REDD).
Ongoing activities:
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Chairing the activities of the land cover team of Global Observations of Forest Cover and Land Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) panel of the Global Terrestrial Observing System of the UN (GTOS) and the CEOS Working Group on Calibration and Validation (land cover subgroup)
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Implementation of work plan for user assessments and the development of standardization documents for the Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) required by the UNFCCC (focus: land cover and biomass)
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Lead the further development of the GOFC-GOLD Sourcebook on REDD MRV
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Participate in the Worldbank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (Technical Advisory Panel) and review of Country REDD MRV activities
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Contribution to the historical degradation monitoring part of FAO’s global Forest Resources Assessment special study and remote sensing survey
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Advising of countries technical bodies and governments on REDD monitoring, reporting and verification with particular emphasis on the role of capacity building and remote sensing
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Participate and contribute to UNFCCC (REDD) and IPCC GHG inventory expert meetings
PhD projects:
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Tbd: Tracking human disturbances and integration with flux-tower measurements.
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N. Tsendbazar: Global land cover monitoring, harmonization, validation and integration with biophysical variables.
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B. DeVries: Monitoring the Impact of REDD+ Implementation and the Establishment of the UNESCO Kafa Biosphere Reserve, Ethiopia.
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J. Reiche: Synergy of optical and radar time series data for large area for change assessments in the tropical countries.
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A. Pratihast: Evolving technologies and community-based monitoring for effective REDD+ implementation.
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M. Schultz: Remote sensing time series analysis for monitoring forest change in the tropics – LUCCi.
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Tbd: The use of remote sensing for national REDD implementation.
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R. Fuchs: Monitoring and estimation of land changes associated with greenhouse gases for Europe from 1900-2010.
Key publications:
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Gamba, P & M. Herold (eds.) (2010). Global Mapping of Human settlement: experiences, data sets, and prospects, CRC Press, 374 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1420083392.
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Herold, M., Mayaux, P., Woodcock, C., Baccini, A. and C. Schmullius (2008).
Some challenges in global land cover mapping: an assessment of agreement and accuracy in existing 1 km datasets, Remote Sensing of Environment, 112, 2538–2556.
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Herold, M., Woodcock, C.E., Loveland, T. R. Townshend, J., Brady, M., Steenmans C. and C. Schmullius (2008).
Land Cover Observations as part of a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS): progress, activities, and prospects, IEEE Systems, Volume 2, Issue 3, 414-423.
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