Satellite data boost global understanding of land surface
To study climate change, scientists need to understand the various modifications on Earth, including those to its land surface. Satellites help by providing data to monitor alterations in land cover.
Earth’s surface is divided into four main types of land biomes: desert, forest, grassland and tundra. From above, satellites can scan Earth's surface, revealing large scale and accurate data that would be impossible to obtain from local observations.
Researchers use these data to map the changing Earth surface.The data give insight into land use, vegetation cover and its modifications, and help to locate hotspots prone to environmental challenges.
ESA's Earth Explorers, such as the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, provide global observations of soil moisture and play an essential role in land monitoring. SMOS data are important for modelling plant growth and forecasting floods.
Future Earth Explorers are expected to build on this key role, with Biomass aiming to map the biomass of Earth's forests and study how it changes over time.
The FLourescence EXplorer (FLEX) mission, expected to launch in 2025, will make global observations of photosynthesis through measurements of chlorophyll-fluorescence, providing key information on terrestrial vegetation and plant health.
Several of ESA's Third Party Missions (TPMs) also provide optical and radar datasets for land-surface monitoring.
For example, COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation, TerraSAR-X and ICEYE provide Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) services supporting a range of applications including land management, cartography and forest protection.
Similarly for optical missions, the Red-Edge band, as provided by TPMs such as PlanetScope, is sensitive to changes in chlorophyll content, and assists in monitoring vegetation health and measuring protein and nitrogen content in biomass.
An even better way to understand Earth's land cover is to study it over long periods of time. This is possible thanks to the heritage datasets from non-operational EO missions, which are managed and made accessible by ESA's Heritage Space Programme.
Missions such as the first European Remote Sensing (ERS) satellite, launched more than 30 years ago, pioneered the collection of data on Earth's surface using microwave, infrared and visible spectrum-based environmental monitoring.
To date, the data collected by ERS over the course of some 20 years continue to provide important land monitoring information, and are being constantly enhanced to build long-term data series with newer missions.
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