RestorEO: Monitoring System for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Restoration
A transparent EO-based monitoring system for biodiversity and ecosystem restoration
Credit: Pixabay, Thematic focus on the three ecosystems of grassland-dominated cultivated landscapes, wetlands and woodlands.
RestorEO will employ Earth Observation (EO) data to support the National Restoration Plan for Austria. Following the European Green Deal (EGD) and the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), countries are obliged to report on their efforts to maintain and restore areas of high biological diversity. The upcoming “EU Nature Restoration Law” will further emphasize this. For this reporting, a quantitative, objective, transparent and reproducible monitoring concept and its implementation is needed. Currently, monitoring is realized based on sample points, which are regularly visited in the field. However, sample-based approaches also have significant shortcomings: The regional or local situation can differ significantly from the overall result. Therefore, local estimates are often unreliable and do not allow to draw appropriate conclusions for the application of measures on the local or regional level. Moreover, the field assessments are time consuming and costly. RestorEO will develop EO-based tools to generate wall-to-wall information for a quantitative monitoring of the status of important ecosystems.
For the development and creation of a first prototype, three ecosystems were selected to be: Forest, wetlands and grassland-dominated cultivated landscapes.
For all habitat types, indicators for degradation like removal of vegetation, soil sealing, change into another land cover / habitat type can be spatially explicitly classified and quantified. The overall aim is to support the public authorities both on the national and regional level with reliable quantitative data to generate the needed statistics and reports. Due to the spatially explicit nature of the generated results, also the local stakeholders such as national park managers will benefit for targeted measures on the ground.
The project is coordinated by the University of Graz - Geography and Spatial Research. The consortium consists of JOANNEUM RESEARCH, E.C.O. - Institute of Ecology, University of Graz - Geography and Spatial Research and the Federal Environmental Agency.
This project is partly funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under the project number FO999892628.
