We are pleased to announce that ARIES, as a part of BC3, is cooperating in the Ecosystem Accounting project (PEOPLE-EA) – a project sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) and led by VITO Remote Sensing which kicked off last October 6th, 2022.
PEOPLE-EA will study the relevance of Earth Observation (EO) for ecosystem accounts in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, and develop, validate and showcase a number of advanced EO solutions to produce ecosystem accounts, in physical terms, on ecosystem extent, condition and services. They will conduct a comprehensive review of the opportunities and challenges to integrate EO in SEEA compliant national accounting.
This is the first ESA project targeted on Ecosystem Accounting
Marc Paganini
European Space Agency
Paganini was present at the project’s kick-off meeting and stated that Ecosystem Accounting can benefit from the availability of an increasing flow of EO data of suitable characteristics, and from the emergence of affordable technical solutions to address the size and complexity of such large data sets. However, to exploit the full potential of EO data sets, the adoption of new technologies such as ARIES and new data sources in national statistical programmes is needed.
Besides the support from BC3, the project counts on the cooperation of five countries:
- Greece via the University of Patras (UPATRAS)
- Italy via the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) and the Italian National Institute of Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA)
- Netherlands via Statistics Netherlands (CBS)
- Norway via Statistics Norway (SSB)
- Slovakia via the Institute of Landscape Ecology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (ILE-SAS).
In conclusion, PEOPLE- EA will contribute to the international collaborative efforts to advance the use of EO in Ecosystem Accounting (GEO EO4EA) and support countries developing their own.
