ABSTRACT
Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................9 References ............................................................................................................... 10
Ecosystem Service Change (Tallis et al. 2012; GEO BON ES 2013). The latter initiatives join more than 50 international organizations and 80 governmental representations under the auspices of the Group on Earth Observations in order to develop the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). Their aim is to compile extensive and standard monitoring of multiple services to allow policymakers and scientists to explore, better understand, and prioritize trade-offs across socioecological settings and scales (from the national to the global level). The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) identified four main sources of data: national statistics, field-based observations, remote sensing, and numerical simulation models (Tallis et al. 2012). Of these, remote sensing offers the potential to use the same standard protocols from local to global scales and through time, which is essential for long-term monitoring and for trade-off assessment across regions. Satellite-based earth observation is probably the most economically feasible means to systematically retrieve global information with high temporal, spatial, and spectral resolution over large areas (Ayanu et al. 2012). Decline in the cost involved in obtaining such data and increase in the computational power of higher resolution sensors to cope with larger data sets will maximize this advantage (Kreuter et al. 2001).
