Geoland2

Geoland2 – Towards an operational GMES Land Monitoring Core Service: Agri-Environmental Indicators Core Information Service (AgriEnv CIS)

Call: FP7-SPACE-2007-1, EC FP-7 GMES Collaborative Project Proposal 
Duration: 4 Years, End of the Project: December 2012

Consortium: Geoland 2 - AgriEnv: Evaluate the utility of the CMS for the supply of EO-based indicators assessing in Europe the impact of agriculture on the environment and the effectiveness of agri-environmental measures.


Project Objectives

AgriEnv will contribute to the improvement of the timely monitoring of agriculture state, of agricultural land use state and changes, and their impact on the environment at the European, national and regional levels. The objective is to fulfil the needs of:

  • European users who are involved in the definition of European directives, strategies and of the CAP: DG Agri, DG Env and EEA,
  • Users responsible for the implementation of European directives, strategies and of the CAP: agriculture and environment ministries, national and regional environmental agencies, national payment agencies, regional water agencies.

Based on users’ requirements, AgriEnv aims at developing and improving agri-environmental indicators assessing:

  • The agriculture state and trends
  • The farming pressure on water and soil resources
  • The contribution of agricultural land use changes to sustainability in terms of impacts on biodiversity and landscapes.

Those indicators will be generated simultaneously on selected demonstration sites, so as to be able to train users on the combined interest of the indicators. They will be supplied at two scales: at the national / catchment scale to provide an overview of the general status of the site and at the scale of hot spot areas requiring more specific monitoring techniques.

The indicators will be produced using as far as possible automatic, flexible and standardised processing chains relying on in situ and Earth Observation (EO) data, and on the outputs of the three CMS of the projects, thanks to the interoperability of the various processing chains.

Final Objective: Demonstrate the increase of accuracy and the utility of European agri-environmental indicators by the use of the 3 CMS as input data.


Impact

The Core Information Service(CIS) AgriEnv will efficiently contribute to the improvement of existing agri-environmental indicators by the effective integration of the Core Mapping Services(CMS), which will provide an access to a full range of spatial scales, temporal scales and thematics. The integration of CMS in the agri-environmental field will also allow to develop new indicators. All these indicators will be provided to the end users in a pre-operational mode. This AgriEnv activity will be closely linked and coordinated with the CMS activities and developments. In that way, it will from the start take into account the future integration of those indicators into the GMES fast-track land service and therefore contribute to the expansion its portfolio.

The prototype services developed by AgriEnv will provide significant and strong basis for the strategic monitoring of the European Community with respect to the implementation of Agri-Environmental Measures (AEM) and national Rural Development plans for the period 2007 – 2013, as foreseen by the European Council Regulation (EC) No 1698/2005. More precicely, AgriEnv indicators will allow to assess the initial situation and will form the basis for the development of the programme strategy.

Based on the achievements reached by the CIS AgriEnv at the end of the project, an implementation plan will be provided that will supply recommendations to make the prototype services operational over Europe, in terms of future sensor needs, in situ data availability and data harmonization, as well as some insight on realistic business models, consistently with the output of the BOSS4GMES project.

Joint Research Centre(JRC) – Institute for Environment and Sustainability - Land Resource Management Unit, Soil Action and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AuTH), School of Forestry and Natural Environment – Lab of Forest Management and Remote Sensing are contributing to the development of Service AgriEnv-04: "Pressure of farm management on soil resources"


Service AgriEnv-04: Pressure of farm management on soil resources

JRC and AuTH are developing the Regional map of the soil erosion Risk(Medium Resolution) in Strymonas River Basin and the High risk areas(High Resolution) inside this catchment. Data and the model description are already available for free download in the "Data - Maps" section.

Taking into account the current availability of Earth Observation datasets and especially satellite imagery, regional soil erosion maps have been produced on a scale of 1:500,000 (thus taking input from 300 m remote sensing products) on a monthly basis, while the local soil erosion maps will be produced on a scale of 1:50,000 (corresponding to a spatial resolution of 25 m) and on request by the end-users (with regard to critical seasons and land uses). The extent ratio between the two geographic areas (regional/local) is estimated at about 1:25.

 


GMES for Europe

The potential of GMES for crisis management and environmental monitoring is highlighted in a new publication with users demonstrating the importance of Earth observation data to European regions. Download the NEREUS-ESA joint publication: "The Growing Use of GMES across Europe's Regions":http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/publications/NEREUS/

Among the GMES 67 case studies in European regions, the article about soil erosion in Central Macedonia is listed. Soil Erosion monitoring at regional level (Central Macedonia, Greece): Gitas, I., Panagos, P., Karydas, C., Montanarella, L., Minakou., H. Pages 16-17 
Soil Erosion can be operationally mapped at monthly intervals by European regions with a recently developed G2 Model.


 

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G2 soil erosion model data
Title: G2 soil erosion model data
Resource Type: Datasets, Soil Projects Data
Theme/Sub-Theme: Erosion by water, G2 Model
Registration requested: Request Form
Continent:
Year: 2013
Publisher: JRC and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Keywords: erosion; G2; modelling; USLE; Spatio-Temporal mapping; Critical zones; Crete; Cyprus; Albania; Strymonas |