A Surveillance System for Assessing and Monitoring of Desertification

DeSurvey integrates 10 RTD workpackages concerned with an integrated approach on monitoring, assessing and modelling desertification from local to regional scale in the European Mediterranean. The relevant work package for Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin zooms in on a limited selection of desertification hot spot areas derived from the integrated analysis in other project modules; primarily high resolution satellite images with 10-30 m pixel size (Landsat-TM, SPOT, ASTER) will provide the data to achieve a better understanding of spatial processes and structural changes involved in transition processes of land use systems, allowing to enhance our knowledge on socio-economic forcing, to support and validate the land suitability concept to be developed in other work packages, and to discriminate between current and inherited desertification.
The work package will largely benefit from the experience derived in previous research projects (such as DeMon-II and GeoRange) which have already proven the feasibility to adequately process and calibrate long time series of earth observation satellite data (Landsat-MSS and TM), such that environmental changes can be assessed which extend over a time span of more than two decades. Such data series allow the application of classical trend analysis in relation to image-derived surrogates for specific surface properties (i.e. vegetation cover, soil condition indices), which complement corresponding information derived in other work packages. Additionally, the combined analysis of trends and mid- to long-term variability (amplitude) of land surface properties derived from long time series of high resolution satellite data will not only highlight changing surface properties under the influence of socio-economic drivers, but also provide an improved understanding of thematic and structural characteristics of agricultural areas and semi-natural vegetation communities.