Living Earth – Mapping states and dynamics of landscapes

The accelerating pace of climate change and human-induced pressures is driving unprecedented deterioration of ecosystems worldwide, with adverse impacts for people and nature. Global Earth Observation (EO) time-series have proved effecting in capturing the magnitude of ongoing environmental impacts, including loss and degradation of vegetation, water bodies and glaciers. Driving pressures include increasing air and sea temperatures, rising sea levels, more frequent and intense floods and storms, and wildfires. Yet, these same data hold immense potential not only to record the extent of loss. Whilst informing on the past, these same data can be used to inform and guide pathways toward recovery and resilience.

The Living Earth initiative represents a pioneering approach to harnessing the power to characterizing mapping, monitoring, and planning landscapes. Uniquely, Living Earth constructs maps of land and water from Environmental Descriptors (EDs) retrieved or classified from EO data according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Land Cover Classification System (LCCS). By comparing these EDs between time-separated periods, evidence can be gathered to discern up to 77 impacts listed in a Global Change Taxonomy (GCT) with these linked to 144 driving pressures obtained from a variety of sources (including EO). this approach is purposefully aligned with the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework, with the response term able to be adjusted to support planning of better futures. Implemented nationally in Wales (UK) and Australia and expanding to other countries (e.g., Papua New Guinea, Switzerland) and regions (e.g., Southeast Asia and Africa through Digital Earth Africa), Living Earth is forming a component of many products including several funded by Horizon Europe (e.g., MONALISA, NEMESIS, LandShift). In all cases, Living Earth demonstrates scalable, reproducible, and open routinely approaches to environmental monitoring. The system requires ARD data from open EO archives such as the Sentinel (Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem – https://dataspace.copernicus.eu) and Landsat (EarthExplorer -https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov) and algorithms for retrieval or classification of EDs.
The generation of land and water classifications and change maps based on impacts and pressures can then be automated. Validation is supported by the Earthtrack mobile application that records land cover and change according to the same taxonomies used for classification of both. This Special Session invites contributors to consider algorithms for retrieving EDs that can be used to support mapping of land
cover and change as well as the recovery of nature and sustainable futures from local to global scales.

Possible submissions (minimum of 5 submissions):

• Living Earth at country level
  • Living Wales [Richard Lucas]
  • Living Switzerland [Charlotte Poussin, Gregory Giuliani]

• Living Earth at continental level
  • Land Cover Australia [Noman Mueller; Digital Earth Australia]
  • Land Cover Africa [Lisa Rebello, Carole Planque; Digital Earth Africa]

• Living Earth in research projects
  • Living Earth for LandShift [Carole Planque, Sébastien Chognard]
  • Living Earth for Land Degradation monitoring [Audrey Lambiel, Mona Bonnier,Pablo Timoner]

• Living Earth on water
  • Living Earth for underwater [Richard Lucas]

• The Earthtrack mobile application and geoportal
  • For ground validation (accuracy assessment, ancillary data, monitoring data)

• Living Earth futures
  • For future projection

Organisers

Gregory Giuliani (University of Geneva, Switzerland)

Land Use & Land Cover SIG , gregory.giuliani@unige.ch