Develop a white paper that will provide an integrated international perspective on how space-based Earth observations can be used to support ecosystem mapping and monitoring with a focus on ecosystem extent
Update 2023-09-28
The white paper is now in an “advanced draft” state and nearly ready to share at the October SIT Technical Workshop where we are hoping to get constructive feedback to incorporate into the version that will be delivered at Plenary. Development started with inputs from the broad Ecosystem Extent Task Team (consisting mostly of outside experts since most agencies do not have biodiversity experts on staff). These inputs were then consolidated by the leads into a very early draft which, after several iterations, was distributed back to the full team for comment. After comment incorporation and several more iterations, the content reached a stage where it was possible to explore recommendations to suggest to CEOS.
The focus then shifted to recommendation development, and initial recommendations from the co-leads were iterated to incorporate inputs from a variety of people having a long history of CEOS experience. Once sufficiently mature these were coordinated with the white paper content into the current draft.
During development it was clear that a separate science-oriented journal paper was appropriate, in part because of the tremendous amount of scientific expertise held by the outside experts. This journal paper is in the early planning stages.