Remote sensing for habitat monitoring

Duration

2024-2025

Partners involved

The pilot is coordinated by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) and the Finnish Ministry of the Environment through the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), involving partners from eleven countries: Belgium (Flanders), Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Italy (Autonomous Province of Bolzano), Ireland, Spain (Catalonia), Slovakia, and Sweden.

External collaboration

The pilot draws on findings and technical knowledge from previous projects such as EuropaBON and the EEA/Eionet survey on habitat mapping and Earth Observation methods. It actively collaborates with on-going projects, including EU Grassland Watch and the Horizon Europe project MAMBO.

More information

Sara Wiman & Risto Heikkinen

Context

Remote sensing (RS) technology offers powerful, cost-effective tools for systematic, repeatable assessments of natural habitats across large areas. However, its potential to provide scalable, harmonised data for transnational mapping and monitoring of habitats of conservation concern, such as the habitat types of the EU Habitat Directive, remains underexplored.

Main objectives

The pilot focuses on assessing the performance of methods available for mapping and monitoring grassland and wetland habitats, two species-rich ecosystems with great nature conservation values, across Europe. It evaluates the ability of different RS-based approaches to provide accurate, scalable data on the distribution of habitat types, their condition, and structural and other qualitative changes, both seasonal and long-term.

In-situ data from selected study sites will be used to supplement remote sensing tools, ensuring robust evaluation of the methodologies. The ultimate aim is to produce guidelines for harmonised habitat monitoring methods adaptable across regions and scales, and to showcase indicators of habitat condition.

Main activities

The pilot consists of four modules:

  • Module 1: Review of partners’ experiences in habitat mapping and monitoring methods and in selected other RS projects, building a solid knowledge base for comparisons of different RS-based tools in the subsequent modules.
  • Modules 2 and 3: Assessment of RS approaches to mapping grassland and wetland habitats, detecting natural and human-induced changes in quality, and mapping and monitoring fine-resolution vegetation structures, bush encroachments, and hydrology indicators with advanced RS tools and input data from various sources, including drones, orthophotos, Lidar and (super resolution) Sentinel data.
  • Module 4: Evaluation of the whole project to develop recommendations for operational upscaling and harmonisation of RS-based methodologies used for habitat mapping and monitoring across Europe.

Main outcomes

Module 1 delivered a comprehensive review of earlier and current habitat mapping and monitoring approaches used in the 11 partner countries and insights from a set of selected related RS-based projects.