geoland2 Project Achievements

Astrium Services is now producing in Near Real Time a set of biophysical variables derived from the MERIS Full Resolution data over the whole Europe. The variables include the Leaf Area Index (LAI), the Fraction of Green Cover, the Fraction of Brown Cover, the Fraction of photo synthetically active radiation absorbed by the vegetation (FAPAR), the Canopy Shadow Factor (CSF), the Chlorophyll content, the Fraction of Soil, the Fraction of Snow, and the Fraction of Water. New products are available every 10 days, and less than 3 days after the most recent acquisition. They are provided by country, and they cover the period from March 2011 to the present, so far.

The NRT MERIS products, like all products of the Biophysical Parameter Core Mapping Services (BioPar), are accessible free of charge through the SDI portal. They are associated to a Product User Manual and a Validation Report that can be downloaded here.

G2 model is a new generic model for erosion, resulted from the cooperation of JRC/IES/Land Management & Natural Hazards Unit and the Lab of Forest Management and Remote Sensing of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in the framework of geoland2 project.

G2 estimates soil loss (in t/ha) from sheet and interril erosion caused by splash and runoff, on a month-step basis and on a landscape scale. G2 employs harmonized standard input data from European and global databases, such as the European Soil Database (ESDB), the Topsoil Organic Carbon (TOC), BioPar products of geoland2, the SPOT imagery and the ASTER DEM datasets. This makes it appropriate for implementation throughout Europe on a 1:500,000 cartographic scale (MMU=10 ha). Download a presentation of G2 model (pdf, 1,1 MB).

G2 model has been applied in the cross-border basin of Strymonas river (14,500 km2), located in South East Europe (Greece/Bulgaria). The results showed that the model could become the basis for a functional pan-European service for soil erosion monitoring on a regional scale. The GIS data of the application can be found at JRC portal.

Contact for more information and a published paper 

The map shows population living within reach of nuclear power plants surrounding Austria. The yellow circle indicates the 20 km zone, dark red the 40 km zone and light red the 100 km buffer zone. As known from the current example Fukushima in Japan, danger zones are established around derelict nuclear reactors to protect residents against radioactivity.

Based on the recent discussion on nuclear power plants, GeoVille GmbH has created several maps within the Core Information Service for Spatial Planning for a number of European countries. GeoVille is a service provider of satellite-based earth observation with offices in Luxembourg and Innsbruck. Spatially refined population data have been generated through a spatial disaggregation model employing the new high-resolution soil sealing layer and population data from the census. Modelling was performed by AIT and GeoVille.

In a 20 km radius, the population is evacuated. In the case of Fukushima, even a complete long-term closure of this area is being considered by law. Because of the increased radiation exposure, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has advised the Japanese government to expand the evacuation zone to 40 km.

About 2.6 million people in Austria live within a radius of 100 km around a nuclear plant. In case of accidents citizens within a radius of 100 km are recommended to stay in their homes and take iodine tablets. The Radiation Protection Advisor of the Ministry of Internal Affairs would in case of accident also recommend farmers to cover their fields and prevent animals from grazing. For the actual threat and a possible radioactive contamination, also factors such as wind and precipitation must be considered.

EEA has published in November 2010 the State of Environment Report 2010, which provides assessments about the current state of the European Environment, likely future trends and measures that can be done to improve it. As source for describing the land cover and land cover changes in Europe operational GMES land data sets were used to compile this report: CORINE Land Cover 2000 and 2006, FTSP SOIL Sealing 2006 and Urban Atlas 2006 are referenced in at least two thematic assessments on “Land Use” (pdf, 6,7 MB) and “Urban Environment” (pdf, 8,2 MB). geoland2 developed 5 High Resolution Layers, largely taken up by the GMES Initial operations starting in 2011, that deliver basic information on Land cover such as Imperviousness (Soil Sealing), Forest, Grassland, Wetland and water bodies to serve direct European reporting requirements (e.g. SOER 2015) and support the continuation of Corine Land Cover in the future.

There is a demand for population data that are independent from administrative areas. Raster representations meet this demand but are not yet available for all European countries. Spatial disaggregation of population data can overcome this gap and has been performed on a Europeen scale based on CORINE land cover data (CLC). The drawback of this approach is the limited spatial resolution of the CLC data set that leads to over-/underestimation of sparsely populated areas depending on the applied method.

With the recently published EEA Fast Track Service Precursor on Land Monitoring a new data set is now available that provides the degree of soil sealing for EEA-38 countries. Applying this data set as a proxy for population density the spatial disaggregation can be improved significantly. Since the soil sealing is not directly corresponding to residential building density a number of pre-processing steps are required beforehand. These steps are defined as simple rules and require CLC data as additional input.

Please download a paper for further information here.

Image: European transect with popuplation on NUTS 3 level (left) and disaggregated to a 500m grid