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Update 2023-11-02

The approach taken has been to work with partners that have related goals or activities and an informal request for proposals led to three potential demonstrators. One of these, for Hudson’s Bay Lowlands, was for work already underway and the other two depended on funding proposals (funding for these was approved and post-docs were selected in October). All three concepts utilize data cubes, focus largely on combining data from different sources, and will explore and utilize cutting edge methodologies.

Hudson’s Bay Lowlands. This is an ongoing activity for Environment and Climate Change Canada focused on this rapidly changing wetland ecosystem with unique biodiversity and large stores of carbon as peat. The specific focus of the Demonstrator is Wapusk National Park, for which there is a large amount of in situ data. The demonstrator will utilize a variety of existing and forthcoming sensor technologies to explore their utility for improved ecosystem mapping, in particular, increasing the number of ecosystems that can be discriminated.

Costa Rica. CNES provided funding for a post-doc that will start this month (November). Key questions include:

• How to operationalize the mapping of forested ecosystems extent to assess a set of biodiversity indicators (RS-EBV’s)
• How can the conservation potential of secondary forests be assessed using information from multi-sensor satellite imagery?
• Can we assess the conservation potential of secondary forests based on the mapping of α and β diversity predicted directly and indirectly from spectral information?

Australian Great Western Woodlands. Since the post doc will not be able to start until March 2024 progress prior to demonstrator delivery at Plenary 2024 will be very limited. Key questions include:

• Can the delineation of vegetation types be improved with multi-wavelength SAR?
• Can stand age be reliably mapped from multi-sensor satellite imagery?
• Can historic stand growth rates be derived from time-series imagery?

2024-11-25

The status of all three demonstrators was presented at a side meeting at the 38th Plenary in Montreal on 22 October 2024. The Wapusk National Park demonstrator in Hudsons Bay Lowlands is complete and this work was also presented at Plenary on 23 October, closing out the EETT's mandate to deliver a demonstrator. However, work on the broader Hudsons Bay Lowlands by ECCC will continue, as will the other two demonstrator projects, supported by CNES (Costa Rice Tropical Forests) and CSIRO (Great Western Woodlands).