20 December 2018
The fall Americal Geophysical Union meeting, where GEO BON convened a session (see previous update), completed last week and provided an opportunity to explain and demonstrate the value of remote sensing for biodiversity monitoring. Henrique Pereira, GEO BON co-chair, gave the introductory talk that provided an overview of Essential Biodiversity Variables and their purpose and value. There were seven other oral presentations and about 25 posters in a related session, all of which focused on the use of RS for monitoring biodiversity. Although EBVs are key, the discussions were not strictly limited to them but also included other RS-based variables useful for monitoring.
A book chapter entitled "Essential Biodiversity Variables: integrating in-situ observations and remote sensing through modelling" was completed, authored by four GEO BON people. The book itself is entitled "Using spectral signals of plants to understand the biology and biodiversity of plants, plant communities, ecosystems and the tree of life" and will be released in 2019. The epilog for the book ties many of the pieces together, exploring some big ideas for broadening the application of for RS biodiversity monitoring.
10 October 2018
An EBV-focused session for the fall American Geophysical Union meeting is planned entitled ?The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON): Integrating in situ and remotely sensed observations to advance biodiversity monitoring, research, and applications?; over 40 abstracts were submitted.
Because EBVs provide guidance on what to measure to monitor biodiversity change, they were a focal point of a workshop (and its related activities) at the California Institute of Technology sponsored by the Keck Institute for Space Studies, 1-5 October. The workshop was entitled ?Unlocking a new era in biodiversity science: linking integrated space-based and in situ observations?.
GEO BON held an All Hands meeting in July. The Ecosystem Structure and Ecosystem Function working groups met to discuss their EBVs, which are largely remote-sending enabled, and the RS-EBV Task Force also met. These meetings helped to bring RS-EBVs closer to those in GEO BON that do not focus on remote sensing approaches.
March 2018:
There were several biodiversity and conservation remote sensing talks at ISRSE 2017.
The community website http://remote-sensing-biodiversity.org/ is regularly updated and has seen an increasing number of visitors and contributors.
Remote sensing is playing a greater role in the Group on Earth Observation Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). A new Remote Sensing Taskforce was established in 2017.
AniMove, a summer school for ecologists on applying remote sensing for biodiversity and conservation, held a session in 2017 at the Max Plank Institute, and has one planned for 2018.
The community has organized a symposium at the IGARSS 2018 conference on biodiversity remote sensing; abstract review is underway.
An organized oral symposium on conservation remote sensing and citizen science observations was recently accepted to the North American Congress for Conservation Biology meeting, which will be held in July 2018.
Update
The conservation remote sensing committee convened at several meetings in 2016.? The Zoological Society of London held a one-day symposium on ?Space - the final frontier for biodiversity monitoring?? and several biodiversity remote sensing sessions were filled to capacity at the May 2016 ESA Living Planet Symposium. GEO BON held an all science conference in July 2016 that featured numerous biodiversity and conservation remote sensing talks, and there were special sessions on EBVs and remote sensing EBVs.