C.A. (Sander) Mücher: “Geo-spatial modeling and monitoring of European landscapes and habitats using remote sensing and field surveys”

Monitoring European biodiversity using remote sensing

A growing world population and a changing lifestyle have led to major changes in land use and environmental pressures. This resulted in a steady decline of habitats and landscapes and demonstrates the need for protection. The Rio Declaration in 1992 confirmed the need to work towards international agreements to protect the integrity of the global environment. The associated Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) draws attention to the need to identify and monitor ecosystems, habitats, species, communities, genomes and genes. All CBD parties have committed themselves in achieving the 2010 Biodiversity Target: to protect and restore habitats and natural systems and halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010. All these policies require quantitative figures on the extent of the habitats and their degree of  fragmentation. However, quantitative information about the spatial distribution of habitats and landscapes is largely lacking. Sander Mücher 's research shows that, in combination with additional environmental data sets, it is now possible to model quantitatively the spatial extent of widespread habitats and landscapes on the basis of land cover information derived from satellite imagery. However, gradual and small changes in habitats and their quality are not easily detected from space. For this reason, protocols have been developed for rapid field inventories of habitats based on vegetation structure that can provide a consistent European baseline. The information obtained from field surveys can be used again for the validation and calibration of the distribution maps of European habitats. Since field surveys always occupy relatively small areas in Europe, the spatial modelling of European landscapes and habitats based on information obtained from remote sensing remains  necessary for a synoptic overview. The developed methodologies for field surveying and spatial modelling are complementary and reinforce each other effectively.