EvoLand unveils its 11 Copernicus Land Monitoring Service candidate prototypes at stakeholder consultation event
14 Jun 2024
The EvoLand project took a significant step forward at its Stakeholder consultation and Prototype demonstration event on Friday, 14 June 2024. Held in Brussels and accessible online, the event showcased all 11 project's innovative prototypes and provided a platform for key stakeholders to offer their invaluable feedback.
Place
Brussels & online
Date
14 Jun 2024
This invitation-only event was targeted to the core users of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), namely representatives from the European Environmental Agency, and the Joint Research Centre (JRC). These stakeholders were given a comprehensive update on EvoLand’s 11 prototypes, including their objectives, methodological approach, status, and planned enhancements. This interaction was crucial as the project transitions into its second development phase.
Participants engaged in a dynamic exchange, discussing user needs and offering insights that will shape the future direction of the prototypes. The project consortium was gathering feedback on how the prototypes compare to the existing CLMS products and whether they align with the current roadmap for improvements of the service. Attendees could suggest particular improvements or avenues for research and development to be tested in the second phase.
The event also highlighted key results from the first development phase, detailed through the visualisations below, illustrating the project’s progress and potential impact. The intermediate results were demonstrated and prepared using Copernicus Browser within the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem. More information on how we utilised the Ecosystem for our prototype demonstration use case is available here.
EvoLand remains committed to an iterative, user-centric development process. Moving forward, the project will enter its second phase of development during which it will maintain an open dialogue with stakeholders, continually gathering feedback and refining user requirements. This collaborative approach ensures that the final iteration of results, will be robust, responsive, and tailored to the needs of the current and potential CLMS users.
The final results will include a publicly available results portal to be launched at the end of October 2025. Meanwhile, you can explore the first results on some of the test sites below.
We welcome interested parties to sign up for our newsletter and/or be involved in feedback by writing to contact@evo-land.eu
C1 Continuous Forest Monitoring
Aim: to extend the portfolio of the current HRL Vegetated Land Cover Characteristics (VLCC) Forest products by improving the update frequency of the forest mask in order to depict the change dynamics within tree covered areas and also to serve as an input to the forest disturbance agent classifier (C2). The prototype focusses on a continuous monthly tree cover change detection at monthly scale and 10 m spatial resolution. This information can be used to improve forest management and planning, support forest-related decision-making processes, or reporting on forest-relevant targets in EU policies.
C2 Forest Disturbance Monitoring
Aim: to derive the cause, in this case the agent of a forest disturbance event. Forest disturbances are defined as areas with a negative change of vital tree cover or a significant loss of tree cover density. Possible disturbance agents cover (i) wind throw/storm damage, (ii) wildfire, and (iii) insect infestation (e.g., bark beetle). In addition, events of (iv) subsequent human-induced forest removal (e.g., clearing, clear cut and logging/thinning activities) are classified. The prototype focusses on a monthly classification of the most likely disturbance agents, as well as a more consolidated annual classification product including the disturbance agent and its forest management status, both at 10m spatial resolution.
C3 Forest biomass mapping
Aim: the candidate consists of two main products: Forest Canopy Height (FCH) and Above-ground biomass (AGB), targeting woody biomass. Forest canopy height can also be stated tree cover canopy height (aligned with the candidate prototypes C1 + C2). This also allows for applying a forest definition and thus offers flexibility to the user. The main products of both data sets are yearly products and are provided with a MMU of 0.25–0.5 ha, whereas expert products on pixel level (10 m spatial resolution) are planned to be delivered as well.
C4 Cover crop type mapping
Aim: to develop a prototype service to map cover crop types at 10m resolution.
C5 Cropland/grassland GPP monitoring
Aim: to improve existing gross primary production estimations available on CGLS (300 m), with focus on crop and grassland.
C6 Small landscape features mapping
Aim: to improve existing Small Woody Features product by adding new classes, and switch to 2.5 m spatial resolution.
C7 Improved water bodies mapping
Aim: to enhance current CLMS products (Copernicus High-Resolution Layer Water and Wetness; Copernicus Global Land Monitoring Water Bodies) for water area delineation.
C8 Continuous imperviousness monitoring
Aim: to demonstrate the potential for continuous monitoring of imperviousness degree as an improvement from 3-yearly CLMS HRL Imperviousness products.
C9 Automated land use mapping of urban dynamics
Aim: to produce a layer of urban changes and its characterisation, both automatically (automatisation of Urban Atlas LULC Change map layer production).
C10 Continuous mapping of land surface characteristics
Aim: to map near real time land surface categories (LSC), i.e. categories that capture basic, observable bio-geophysical properties of the Earth surface.
C11 On-demand land cover mapping
Aim: to demonstrate an on-demand LC service by showcasing a number of tailored LC products with customised classes (e.g. crop types, leaf types, plantations) for different spatial resolutions (100m, 10m, 5m) and observation periods.
Newsletter
Stay current! Subscribe to our EvoLand newsletter!