5th EARSeL SIG Workshop Land Use & Land Cover
Land Cover and Land Use (LCLU) is listed as an Essential Climate Variable as it influences the Earth’s energy balance, the carbon and water cycle. Changes of LCLU (LCLUC) have consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, implying varying levels of ecosystem services such as pollination, water purification, and flood regulation. LCLUC may disrupt these services, affecting the overall resilience of ecosystems and societies. Thus, continuous and accurate monitoring is key for decision making, favouring sustainable development and effective climate action.
Incredible progress has been made in using EO and Big Data for better land monitoring. However, Land Cover characterization remains challenging and there is a lack of comparability between existing products as well as understanding sources of uncertainty. It is further crucial to generate analysis- or decision-ready LCLU products that are both accessible and understandable for decision makers. By generating new methods and products, there will also be a need to address functional aspects of LCLU as well (e.g., by distinguishing management intensities of agricultural land, forest structure and diversity, urban green, etc.).
Ultimately, LCLU remote sensing is critical to contribute to applied research using powerful geospatial and statistical analyses with the objective to serve as a source of “actionable” and timely early warnings of emerging issues and environmental change, and related multi-scale assessments, based on scientific data, indicators, and real-time information, and help to catalyze “evidence-based” responses.
List of topics
This session welcomes contributions to the following topics, without being limited to these:
- New methods for generating LCLUC
- Algorithms for generating decision-ready products
- Data fusion techniques
- Data mining using Machine Learning, Deep Learning, …
- Data quality, reliability, uncertainty approaches…
- Ecological or biophysical impact assessment of LCLUC
- Cost/Benefits analysis
- Thematic applications (e.g. biodiversity, climate, health, natural hazards, …)
- New innovative tools and solutions to work with EO Data Cubes
- Use of high to very-high resolution EO data
- Integration of in-situ observations
- Local, national, regional implementations
- Support to policy framework such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris agreement, Aichi targets, or Water Framework Directive
Organisers
Dr Birgitta Putzenlechner (Georg-August-University Göttingen) – birgitta.putzenlechner@uni-goettingen.de
Dr Gregory Giuliani (University of Geneva) – gregory.giuliani@unige.ch
Scientific committee (for this Workshop)
Birgitta Putzenlechner (Georg-August-University Göttingen)
Gregory Giuliani (University of Geneva)
Richard Lucas (Aberystwyth University)
Conrad Bielski (EOXPLORE)
Nataliia Kussul (Igor Sikorsky KPI)
Maria Brovelli (Politechnico Milano)
Stefan Stamenov
Edyta Woźniak
Bogdan Zagajewski
Dirk Tiede
Link to the EARSeL SIG webpage: http://lulc.earsel.org