Abstract
The overall aim of this short term project is to collate and compile information from other recent reviews (including those undertaken by Defra, JNCC, the country agencies, members of the Forum for Earth Observation Applications, and relevant EU projects) to produce a succinct summary of the use of Earth Observation* for operational biodiversity surveillance by UK country conservation agencies; and to identify potential opportunities for use of Earth Observation techniques to address gaps and provide more cost-effective approaches that will inform development of further subsequent projects in phases 2 and 3. The focus will be on Priority Habitats and Habitats Directive Annex 1 habitats) in the UK for both country and UK level needs. The requirement is for work that will: •provide a systematic assessment by habitat of where and how Earth Observation (EO) and geoinformatic approaches are providing, or can provide, competitive (in time and money) solutions for making habitat measurements (specifically extent; distribution; condition; and change to all these parameters) and assessing ecosystem service. Such solutions should be considered on two time scales as priority oshort term – turning currently available and operational EO and geoinformatic techniques into operational approaches; omedium term - where up to 5 years may be required to translate promising research into operational approaches; owith an indication of long term solutions where possible– where 5-10 years are required for the development of new research or techniques and the translation of the findings into operational techniques; •identify the barriers (technical, organisational or otherwise) to achieving the short and medium-term solutions; •identify options for the work required to overcome these barriers; •use this assessment of the actual and potential application of EO and geoinformatic approaches to provide the UK’s input into a GMES ‘use case’ for biodiversity. *For the purposes of this project ‘Earth Observation and geoinformatic approaches’ includes both the acquisition and application of aerial or satellite-derived datasets; and their integration both with a wider range of GI datasets and techniques and data derived from field sampling and ground-based observations.
United Kingdom