The activities of our various departmental working groups relate in particular to the UN Sustainable Development Goals #13 - Climate Action and #15 - Life on Land, as well as agricultural supply issues, and SDG #2 - Zero Hunger. Projects and topics with a clear focus on these goals are listed below. In some cases, we cooperate with other sections and partners.

Satellite missions and data are immensely important for sustainability considerations: how much groundwater is mankind extracting worldwide, where are glaciers melting and at what rate is this happening, where are there signs of droughts? In Department 1, we often use such satellite data when working on scientific topics.

Currently, the GRACE-FO satellite mission, operated in cooperation between the U.S. space agency NASA and the GFZ, provides us with quantitative information on large-scale changes in the total amount of water stored on the continents through the repeated measurement of the Earth's gravitational field (satellite gravimetry) as the only currently operational remote sensing method - independent of its aggregate state and surface exposure. The time series of GRACE-FO data are thus reliable indicators of long-term changes in the Earth system.

Satellite data have the great advantage of enabling comparable observations even on a global scale, because they are based on completely uniformly collected data. However, satellite data are still a fairly new data basis, so that the algorithms needed for their evaluation and ultimately their use are often still under development. We are making a major contribution here in particular.

Contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goal #6 - Clean Water and Sanitation

Based on GRACE and GRACE-FO Total Water Storage (TWS) anomalies, the WaMoSpace (Water Monitoring from Space) project provides quantitative and independent water-related information at regional to global scales. It is a start-up project led by GFZ and supported by GFZ's Technology Transfer Division. It helps water managers make better and earlier decisions about forecasting water availability and mitigating hydrological risks, and enables production managers to make better predictions about crop outcomes and water reservoir levels. Farm-specific drought early warnings based on optical and hydrogravimetric satellite data are also now part of the offering.

Contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals #2 - No Hunger, #13 - Climate Action and #15 - Life on Land

The AgriSens DEMMIN 4.0 project supports the optimal use of our agricultural land. The goal is to better integrate geo-information data from remote sensing into agricultural processes and thus make more informed decisions in crop production.

Currently, the focus is on recording the biomass development of wheat, characterising low-yield areas, optimising irrigation in potato cultivation and detecting stones that damage equipment in the field.  The methods developed are directly related to the increasing demand for food and raw materials due to growing population and simultaneous shortage of agricultural land, which go hand in hand with the challenges of global change.

Contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals #13 - Climate Action and #15 - Life on Land

By advancing the detection and monitoring of greenhouse gases in rewetted peatland ecosystems in EU-funded projects such as WetHorizons, GFZ is helping to protect or restore these important terrestrial ecosystems, promote their sustainable use, and halt and reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss - which is at the heart of SDG #15 - Life on Land, while combating climate change and its impacts (SDG #13 - Climate Action). Specifically, the GFZ monitors heat, water and carbon (CO2, CH4) fluxes between ecosystems and the atmosphere using state-of-the-art micrometeorological methods deployed from both stationary and mobile platforms. The GFZ thus contributes to the development of more robust emission factors for national and international reporting on greenhouse gas turnover.

Contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals #13 - Climate Action and #15 - Life on Land

Climate change and the resulting increase in the occurrence of extreme events such as storms, heavy precipitation or droughts have serious effects on the condition of our ecosystems. Known effects are, for example, the increased occurrence of pests or stress factors, resulting in the death of species or their displacement by new species that are better adapted to the new site conditions. This is sometimes accompanied by a loss of biodiversity. Regular monitoring of these areas using combined approaches of measurements on the ground and remote sensing data, for example in the NATEC and StrucChangeNet projects, help to document and understand the processes of change and to derive recommendations for action for nature conservation and forestry on this basis.

Last but not least, by participating in the large-scale TERENO monitoring network of the Research Field Earth and Environment of the Helmholtz Association, researchers from Department 1, together with colleagues from other departments and centres, are creating a solid data foundation for observing global change and its effects on Germany.

• G3P project: Information on the changing state of the freshwater resource on a European and global scale
  https://www.gfz-potsdam.de/sektion/hydrologie/projekte/g3p-global-gravity-based-groundwater-product/

More information about research in the sections of DEPARTMENT GEODESY.