 IKI - MSR Research Workshop Space Research Institute (IKI), Moscow, Russia 11 June, 2009 |
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Speaker: Sergey Bartalev, IKI RAS Information on the status, dynamics and interactions of major components of the Earth system, such as terrestrial ecosystems, climate and human society is essential for global change science, natural resource management and environmental protection. The mechanism of their interactions is based on the matter and energy exchange processes, which, in spite of their complexity, can be quantified through the appropriate measurement and modeling of biogeochemical cycles and water/energy exchanges. The Earth observation satellite data play an important role providing up to date and historical, spatially explicit information to map and quantify changes in the land surface for use in modeling studies. In particular, but not exclusively, it is important for the Northern Eurasia region with extensive and remote territories, large areas of land which are poorly inventoried and monitored. The region is important due to rapid socio-economic changes coupled with climate variability, while science and resource management requirements for uniform and comprehensive data sets and integrated databases gives increasing emphasis on the generation of new data products. These products have to characterise large-scale vegetation dynamics including changes resulted from fires, forest logging, conversion of grasslands to agriculture, land abandonment following institutional changes, as well as longer term trends resulting from climate change. The Russian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute is working on development of an integrated observing system based on satellite remote sensing technique for monitoring of terrestrial ecosystems of boreal zone with specific focus on Northern Eurasia. The system consists of the following components:
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