“You need Earth observation data to understand how our past activities and natural events and processes have shaped the landscapes we see today, but also to plan the future landscape to meet the needs not only of the current generation, but also those that follow.” – Richard Lucas, Aberystwyth University
As the EU goals for local weather neutrality in agriculture and land use by 2035, in addition to changing into the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, the “greening” of agriculture turns into a high precedence. Because greater than one-third of all world emissions are associated to the meals system, the EU should remodel agricultural coverage for larger sustainability. Earth commentary information can play an important position in this transformation to fulfill the EU’s formidable targets.
At our latest Explore 2021 convention, Tamme Van Der Waal, director and innovation strategist at BioScope, spoke with two sustainable agriculture consultants: Christine Müller, coverage officer at the Directorate-General for Climate Action of the European Commission, and Richard Lucas, Sêr Cymru analysis chair in Earth commentary at Aberystwyth University in Wales.
Müller and Lucas shared their views on Earth commentary (EO) as a necessary device for greening agricultural coverage. Through EO information, policymakers can higher perceive land composition and use, design acceptable goals for greening coverage, and assess progress in the direction of targets.
How Earth commentary helps coverage goals
Satellite information is a necessary device for agricultural coverage inside and out of doors of the EU, because it permits monitoring of greening measures. More importantly, satellite tv for pc information performs an important position in visualization for planning, simulations, and the design of agricultural coverage to attain desired outcomes.
As the EU shifts to assist carbon farming, which inspires practices that enhance the charge at which CO2 is faraway from the environment, EO performs an instrumental position.
“Earth observation is indeed an essential prerequisite to ensure a consistent representation of land and identify changes in land use, which are so important for our greenhouse gas inventories,” Müller mentioned. “We use these inventories as background for policy-making, and also for compliance checks that we’ve achieved our targets.”
The Welsh authorities gives a pioneering case examine of how EO, particularly Planet information, can assist the improvement of inexperienced agricultural insurance policies.
Earth commentary in motion: Living Wales
Living Wales, a analysis mission sponsored by the Welsh authorities, depends on insights from Planet’s historic and real-time Earth commentary information to mannequin future panorama situations and monitor progress towards them. This information informs Wales’ land coverage design, improves confidence in greening measures, and permits shut monitoring and evaluation of coverage influence over time.
Land cowl maps are key to this complete understanding, and environmental descriptors—for instance, crop sort, foliar chemistry, leaf air index, and plenty of others—are the constructing blocks for creating these maps. Earth commentary permits for retrieving these descriptors, and as Lucas defined, Planet information is helpful for optical descriptors at high-spatial decision and temporal frequencies.
Lucas and his staff consider how completely different situations influence land use with EO. They begin by monitoring land cowl by assigning environmental descriptors, utilizing that information in addition to historic information to foretell future landscapes. In the course of, the staff generates future land cowl maps, screens progress towards local weather targets, and adapts targets as wanted over time.
At every stage, the Earth commentary staff evaluates the financial values of landscapes—that’s, the implications of shifting in the direction of native meals manufacturing and provide, or the contributions of ecosystems to mitigation of greenhouse fuel emissions and restoration of biodiversity.
Leading by instance for the land’s well-being
Success in greening agriculture requires a guiding imaginative and prescient. Living Wales’ framework is being adopted as a nationwide method to land monitoring, offering nationwide, worldwide, and particular person leaders with a working blueprint for a proactive, collaborative, and clear method.
The method can be quantitative and is being developed to be used in environmental and financial accounts, each in Wales and internationally. People with various and related abilities and data have been and can proceed to be elementary to the transformation course of—as is Planet information, which is getting used alongside Living Wales at each stage.
“In our transformational work, Earth observation supports us in the processes of strategy and vision building, guidance formulation to our member states and stakeholders, and translation of aggregate targets into desirable futures,” Müller mentioned. “EO also supports regional opportunities for change and targeted direction of climate finance and local support, motivating change on the ground and making it possible.”
In its intention to attain local weather neutrality by 2035, Living Wales contributes to coverage transformation that ensures the well-being of each individuals and nature. By utilizing Planet information, Wales has efficiently transitioned from maps to proactive and constructive motion.
“You need Earth observation data to understand how our past activities and natural events and processes have shaped the landscapes we see today,” Lucas mentioned, “but also to plan the future landscape to meet the needs not only of the current generation, but also those that follow.”
Are you in how EO information might help empower the sustainable agriculture revolution? Learn how Planet is supporting the distant sensing administration of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in this webinar. Watch now.