GEOLAND2 - towards operational GMES Land Monitoring Core Service

The goal of Geoland2 project is to prepare, validate and demonstrate pre-operational service chains and products that will underpin the Land Monitoring Core Service (LMCS) , and to propose and demonstrate a concrete functional organisation of the LMCS.

The architecture of Geoland2 project is made of two different layers, the Core Mapping Services (CMS) and the Core Information Services (CIS). The CMS produce 'basic' land cover, land cover change, and land state products which are of broad generic use and can be directly used for deriving more elaborated products. The CMS products cover a wide variety of thematic content, spatial scales from local to global, and update frequency, from 1 day to several years. The CIS are a set of thematic elements that start from CMS products and other data sources to produce elaborated information products addressing specific European policies.

Three Core Mapping Services within Geoland2 are:

• Land Cover and Land Use - EUROLAND
• Biogeophysical Parameters - BioPar
• Seasonal and Annual Change Monitoring - SATChMo

Seven Core Information Services (CIS) are included within Geoland2 project, namely:

• Spatial Planning
• Water
• Agri-Environment
• Forest
• Land Carbon
• Global Crop Monitoring (GCM)
• Natural Resource Monitoring in Africa (NARMA)

Institute of Geodesy and Cartography (IGiK) actively participates in development of three Geoland2 services: SATChMo, BioPar and Global Crop Monitoring.

Within SATChMo module IGiK performs tasks concerning preparation of technology for land use and land use change mapping in Europe, applying high-resolution and medium-resolution satellite data. Operational methods of monitoring phenological trends and estimating crop acreages in Europe are also developed in this module with IGiK's contribution.

Within Global Crop Monitoring module Institute of Geodesy and Cartography conducts works related to inter-comparison of various methods for estimating crop acreages and yields in global / regional scale, which are based on multi-temporal remote sensing derived information.

Within BioPar module Institute of Geodesy and Cartography is involved in the works aimed at development of methods of vegetation monitoring with the use of different indices derived from medium-resolution satellite images.

Within Coordination Office of Geoland2 project the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography performs tasks related to harmonization of validation approaches applied in various modules of the Project.