Project update | 13 October 2023
GEO BON Global Conference: Monitoring Biodiversity for Action
Marc Paganini from the European Space Agency gave a presentation at the GEO BON Global Conference about the work of the BiCOME project.
The Global Conference on Biodiversity and Monitoring was organized by GEO BON and its partners between 10-13 October 2023 in Montreal, Canada. One year after COP15 of the UN CBD and the landmark agreement of a Global Biodiversity Framework, the GEO BON global conference will focus on the grand challenge of ‘Monitoring Biodiversity for Action’. A central theme will be the development of best practices and new technologies for biodiversity observations and monitoring to support transformative policy and conservation action.
Marc gave a talk centred around the following abstract:
Satellite Earth observation products to inform ocean Essential Biodiversity Variables in the context of climate change
Victor Martinez-Vicente
1, Shubha Sathyendranath
1, Thomas Jackson
1, Peter I. Miller
1, Stefanie Brosziet
1, Pierre Gernez
2,Laurent Barille
2 , Simon Oiry
2, Bede Davies
2, Dimosthenes Traganos
3, Avi Pertiwi
3, Francois Steinmetz
4, Angus Atkinson
1, Josean Fernandes
5, Dionysios Raitsos
6, Sofia Darmaraki
6, Javier Concha
7, Marie-Helene Rio
7, Marc Paganini
7
1 Plymouth Marine Laboratory,
2 Nantes University,
3 DLR,
4 Hygeos,
5 AZTI,
6 NKUA,
7 European Space Agency
Increasing pressure on nature due to anthropogenic drivers is leading to a reduction of global biodiversity and its associated benefits at the planetary scale. In coastal and open ocean environments, the most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss (fishing, land and sea use, pollution) combine with climate change. These drivers have accelerated in the last 50 years (IPBES, 2019) and they are predicted to continue (Leclère et al, 2020), despite international efforts in the last decades (Convention on Biological Diversity, CBD, Aichi targets) and renewed efforts (Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework). In order to guide further action, it is therefore urgent and important to develop “fit-for-purpose” observation tools from existing remote sensing platforms. These observations should be capable of assessing and monitoring how the community structure and function of coastal ecosystems will respond to the anthropogenic and natural drivers in a changing climate.
We present progress on two projects supported by the European Space Agency (ESA): Biodiversity in the Open Ocean: Mapping, Monitoring and Modelling (BOOMS) and Biodiversity of the Coastal Ocean: Monitoring with Earth Observation (BiCOME). These projects focus on exploring satellite ocean colour and front observations to derive a wide range Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) in a intertidal, subtidal and pelagic (coastal and oceanic) ecosystems. The approach is to test conventional and advanced Earth Observation algorithms to assess their ability to retrieve EBV at community and ecosystem level. The results will feed into a roadmap informing ESA about future algorithms and datasets development needs.