TY - JOUR A1 - Holzwarth, Stefanie A1 - Thonfeld, Frank A1 - Abdullahi, Sahra A1 - Asam, Sarah A1 - Da Ponte Canova, Emmanuel A1 - Gessner, Ursula A1 - Huth, Juliane A1 - Kraus, Tanja A1 - Leutner, Benjamin A1 - Kuenzer, Claudia T1 - Earth Observation based monitoring of forests in Germany: a review JF - Remote Sensing N2 - Forests in Germany cover around 11.4 million hectares and, thus, a share of 32% of Germany's surface area. Therefore, forests shape the character of the country's cultural landscape. Germany's forests fulfil a variety of functions for nature and society, and also play an important role in the context of climate levelling. Climate change, manifested via rising temperatures and current weather extremes, has a negative impact on the health and development of forests. Within the last five years, severe storms, extreme drought, and heat waves, and the subsequent mass reproduction of bark beetles have all seriously affected Germany’s forests. Facing the current dramatic extent of forest damage and the emerging long-term consequences, the effort to preserve forests in Germany, along with their diversity and productivity, is an indispensable task for the government. Several German ministries have and plan to initiate measures supporting forest health. Quantitative data is one means for sound decision-making to ensure the monitoring of the forest and to improve the monitoring of forest damage. In addition to existing forest monitoring systems, such as the federal forest inventory, the national crown condition survey, and the national forest soil inventory, systematic surveys of forest condition and vulnerability at the national scale can be expanded with the help of a satellite-based earth observation. In this review, we analysed and categorized all research studies published in the last 20 years that focus on the remote sensing of forests in Germany. For this study, 166 citation indexed research publications have been thoroughly analysed with respect to publication frequency, location of studies undertaken, spatial and temporal scale, coverage of the studies, satellite sensors employed, thematic foci of the studies, and overall outcomes, allowing us to identify major research and geoinformation product gaps. KW - remote sensing KW - earth observation KW - forest KW - forest monitoring KW - forest disturbances KW - Germany KW - review Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-216334 SN - 2072-4292 VL - 12 IS - 21 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dech, Stefan A1 - Holzwarth, Stefanie A1 - Asam, Sarah A1 - Andresen, Thorsten A1 - Bachmann, Martin A1 - Boettcher, Martin A1 - Dietz, Andreas A1 - Eisfelder, Christina A1 - Frey, Corinne A1 - Gesell, Gerhard A1 - Gessner, Ursula A1 - Hirner, Andreas A1 - Hofmann, Matthias A1 - Kirches, Grit A1 - Klein, Doris A1 - Klein, Igor A1 - Kraus, Tanja A1 - Krause, Detmar A1 - Plank, Simon A1 - Popp, Thomas A1 - Reinermann, Sophie A1 - Reiners, Philipp A1 - Roessler, Sebastian A1 - Ruppert, Thomas A1 - Scherbachenko, Alexander A1 - Vignesh, Ranjitha A1 - Wolfmueller, Meinhard A1 - Zwenzner, Hendrik A1 - Kuenzer, Claudia T1 - Potential and challenges of harmonizing 40 years of AVHRR data: the TIMELINE experience JF - Remote Sensing N2 - Earth Observation satellite data allows for the monitoring of the surface of our planet at predefined intervals covering large areas. However, there is only one medium resolution sensor family in orbit that enables an observation time span of 40 and more years at a daily repeat interval. This is the AVHRR sensor family. If we want to investigate the long-term impacts of climate change on our environment, we can only do so based on data that remains available for several decades. If we then want to investigate processes with respect to climate change, we need very high temporal resolution enabling the generation of long-term time series and the derivation of related statistical parameters such as mean, variability, anomalies, and trends. The challenges to generating a well calibrated and harmonized 40-year-long time series based on AVHRR sensor data flown on 14 different platforms are enormous. However, only extremely thorough pre-processing and harmonization ensures that trends found in the data are real trends and not sensor-related (or other) artefacts. The generation of European-wide time series as a basis for the derivation of a multitude of parameters is therefore an extremely challenging task, the details of which are presented in this paper. KW - AVHRR KW - Earth Observation KW - harmonization KW - time series analysis KW - climate related trends KW - automatic processing KW - Europe KW - TIMELINE Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-246134 SN - 2072-4292 VL - 13 IS - 18 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bell, Alexandra A1 - Klein, Doris A1 - Rieser, Jakob A1 - Kraus, Tanja A1 - Thiel, Michael A1 - Dech, Stefan T1 - Scientific evidence from space — a review of spaceborne remote sensing applications at the science–policy interface JF - Remote Sensing N2 - On a daily basis, political decisions are made, often with their full extent of impact being unclear. Not seldom, the decisions and policy measures implemented result in direct or indirect unintended negative impacts, such as on the natural environment, which can vary in time, space, nature, and severity. To achieve a more sustainable world with equitable societies requires fundamental rethinking of our policymaking. It calls for informed decision making and a monitoring of political impact for which evidence-based knowledge is necessary. The most powerful tool to derive objective and systematic spatial information and, thus, add to transparent decisions is remote sensing (RS). This review analyses how spaceborne RS is used by the scientific community to provide evidence for the policymaking process. We reviewed 194 scientific publications from 2015 to 2020 and analysed them based on general insights (e.g., study area) and RS application-related information (e.g., RS data and products). Further, we classified the studies according to their degree of science–policy integration by determining their engagement with the political field and their potential contribution towards four stages of the policy cycle: problem identification/knowledge building, policy formulation, policy implementation, and policy monitoring and evaluation. Except for four studies, we found that studies had not directly involved or informed the policy field or policymaking process. Most studies contributed to the stage problem identification/knowledge building, followed by ex post policy impact assessment. To strengthen the use of RS for policy-relevant studies, the concept of the policy cycle is used to showcase opportunities of RS application for the policymaking process. Topics gaining importance and future requirements of RS at the science–policy interface are identified. If tackled, RS can be a powerful complement to provide policy-relevant evidence to shed light on the impact of political decisions and thus help promote sustainable development from the core. KW - earth observation KW - evidence-based policy KW - policy cycle KW - decision-making KW - sustainable development KW - science–policy interface Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-303925 SN - 2072-4292 VL - 15 IS - 4 ER -