Understanding the Impact of Drought and Biological Disturbances as a proxy of Climate Change on Ecosystem Functioning in Mediterranean Open Forest
(optional) Suggested elective course(s)
- Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing: From Theory to Applications
- Advanced Image Analysis
The proposed topic is part of the WP2 of the 'Bioclima: Assessing Land Use, Climate and Biodiversity Impacts of Land-based Climate Mitigation and Biodiversity Policies in the EU.' The BioClima project, bolstered by the EU-China collaboration, aims to enhance biodiversity and climate monitoring by integrating advanced AI with ground-based and remote-sensing data systems
The concept of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) has been established to serve as a key climate indicator that provides crucial information about the Earth's climate system, while the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) framework was introduced to enhance the collection, sharing, and utilisation of biodiversity information, aiming to monitor biodiversity changes over time. Assessing the impact of climate change on biodiversity is challenging due to the gradual nature of changes; however, the effects of climate change intertwine with other stress factors already affecting the environment. There are still numerous gaps in our understanding of how climate change impacts biodiversity, particularly ecosystem functioning. Healthy ecosystem function is an indicator and also a foundation for biodiversity. Monitoring ecosystem function is critical for global environmental management. It is also considered an early warning system for ecosystem disturbances and aids researchers and policy-makers in assessing the impact of climate change on ecological processes. Understanding ecosystem function alteration can help evaluate the ecosystem's current status and the success of ecological restoration efforts. In addition, understanding the alteration in ecosystem function can help identify changes in ecosystem services and make it possible to evaluate how climate change stressors may influence the delivery of ecosystem services. In this respect, monitoring EBV candidates associated with ecosystem functioning and their response to extreme events caused by climate change (i.e., drought) is essential to designing timely mitigation and adaptation strategies. In this task, we aim to establish the link between land surface temperature (LST) as a terrestrial ECV and its role as a proxy of climate change and EBV candidates associated with ecosystem functioning, including primary productivity and ecosystem phenology. The EBVs will be retrieved using advanced Earth observation platforms (e.g., Sentinel-2) to capture the alteration in ecosystem functioning and their response to climate change stressors.
Monitor and understand the impacts of climate change on ecosystem structures and functions by applying EBVs and ECVs. This research emphasises the advancement of biodiversity and climate monitoring, mainly focusing on the challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss in specific vulnerable forest ecosystems. The study is part of the BioClima Horizon Europe project and includes the identification and utilisation of the EBVs and ECVs as a proxy for climate change. This includes assessing the effects of climate change stressors on ecosystem functioning.
- Skidmore, A. K., Coops, N. C., Neinavaz, E., Ali, A., Schaepman, M. E., Paganini, M., ... & Wingate, V. (2021). Priority list of biodiversity metrics to observe from space. Nature ecology & evolution, 5(7), 896-906.
- Neinavaz, E., Schlerf, M., Darvishzadeh, R., Gerhards, M., & Skidmore, A. K. (2021). Thermal infrared remote sensing of vegetation: Current status and perspectives. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 102, 102415.