Sustainable ecosystem management

Sustainable land and ecosystem management needs spatio-temporal monitoring of phenological development and vegetation conditions. Time series of bio-geophysical parameters from global (100 – 300m) to regional scale (1 – 30m) are generated by VITO Remote Sensing’s processing workflows and provide real-time insight into:

  • Vegetation health
  • Vegetation cover
  • Above-ground biomass
  • Canopy chlorophyll
  • Dry matter content
  • Leaf area
  • Leaf equivalent water thickness
  • Fraction of incoming photosynthetically active radation absorbed by vegetation (FAPAR)
  • Surface radiation (albedo)
Reaching the ecosystems’ core

Bio-geophysical parameters are cornerstones to understand ecosystem dynamics, manage natural resources and assess carbon budget. In order to truly understand ecosystems, you need cross-disciplinary insights into plant physiology, remote sensing and modelling.

VITO Remote Sensing analyzes integrated archives of Earth Observation data (Spot-Vegetation, ENVISAT-Meris, PROBA-V, NOAA-AVHRR, Metop-AVHRR, Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, …), meteorological data and in-situ data to help you to improve your understanding of ecosystems and their changes. That way we can solve questions like:

  • Did the growing season start early this year?
  • How does seasonal vegetation grow?
  • When was a grassland cut?
  • How do deforestation and reforestation events occur?
  • Where do droughts occur most frequently?
  • Where are the best grazing conditions for pastures?