Objectives
An important objective of the Observatory Water & Soil – Water is
to develop and establish pre-operational capabilities of an efficient use of spatial
information related to land management and irrigation practices within European river
basins. This is done in close co-operation with key user organisations, such as national
and regional environmental authorities and river basin authorities, responsible for the
implementation of European policies, directives and standardisation initiatives.
The demand for a wall-to-wall system for monitoring spatial and temporal
variations and the follow-up of environmental trends, quality objectives and policy
measures calls for a new conceptual framework. The Observatory will address this by
developing stable, repetitive and quality-assured methods that integrate and optimise the
use of earth observation derived information, i.e. land use / land cover data with
customized thematic, spatial and temporal resolution, and ancillary geospatial data as
input to catchment and surface water modelling.
The Observatory addresses the WFD as a key policy covering a broad range of
implications, where information derived from Earth observation satellites can contribute
to a high extent, providing spatial information on environmental pressure and state, which
can be translated to pollution risks and environmental indicators required from decision
makers.
The environmental issues affecting water are obviously different in the various
geographical and climatological regions of Europe. Southern Europe is affected by water
shortage situations due to imbalance between irrigation and resources. The boreal regions
are affected by intense forestry. Finally, if the water pollution by fertilizers is a
common concern in Europe, it affects with higher intensity regions of stock-farming and
the Western and Central Europe, where intensive cereal agriculture is practiced. This
shows the importance of carrying out the work at a European level with a segmentation
approach for different eco-regions.
The partners of the Observatory are all involved in national as well as international
research and development activities of relevance to the WFD. Their insight into other
relevant projects, such as the ESA GSE project SAGE addressing mature geo-information
services to serve WFD related issues (see: http://www.gmes-sage.info), will secure that
account will be taken of these activities.
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