ABSTRACT
“Global change”—a short formula for a multitude of anticipated shifts in societal and environmental domains due to global drivers— calls for spatial monitoring and modeling techniques to better understand the implications and potential dynamics of such changes (Lang et al. 2013a). International initiatives, programs, and visions envisage unified systems based on quality standards for data, products, and services to establish optimized observation capacity to globally monitor land surfaces and oceans, climate, and atmosphere, as well as social systems such as public health, human security, and energy consumption. The global initiative Group on Earth Observations (GEO*) distinguishes nine societal benefit areas of civilian observations systems, among which biodiversity and ecosystems are two. The term Earth observation (EO) comprises all observation systems that use sensor technologies to capture various kinds of physical parameters. This includes space- or airborne measurement devices (sensors mounted on satellites, aircrafts, or unmanned aerial vehicles), as well as mobile ground devices (e.g., unmanned ground vehicles), and fixed measurement instruments (e.g., ground sensors, buoys, terrestrial laser scanners). All these observation systems taken together form a GEO System of Systems, the GEOSS, which is being implemented over a period of 2005 until 2015 (GEO 2005). More specifically, the GEO biodiversity observation network,† for example, evaluates the adequacy of existing biodiversity observation systems to support the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 2020 targets. A list of essential biodiversity variables (Pereira et al. 2013) has been established that should be monitored worldwide in order to follow up the state of biodiversity adequately. Many of these global indicators are relying on remotely sensed imagery.
