Together with 22 partners from Europe and beyond, GFZ is starting the Open-Earth-Monitor, a Europe Horizon project. This project embraces the use of open-source environmental data (remote sensing, in-situ) and the development of methods and tools to enhance monitoring and assessments in critical regions on earth. An open-source cyberinfrastructure will be built, that will significantly accelerate the uptake of environmental information, and help build user communities at European and global levels. Thus, this project directly supports the Open Science ambitions of the GFZ.

Invitation to the free kick-off workshop (hybrid)

On the occasion of the project kickoff, a first public workshop (hybrid) will be held on July 19th2022.
On the agenda: interactive debates, feedback collection, demo sessions & social activities, with the presence of prominent voices from earth observation and data policy, business and academia.

Be part of it and register here: https://bit.ly/3ArlA9y

Context of the Open-Earth-Monitor project

In recent decades, the world has experienced rapid growth in Earth Observation technology, which is considered by many to be one of the key tools to tackle the environmental and climatic crises across borders. But this has come at a cost: massive and inconsistent data volumes produced by EO sensors and ground monitoring networks are now overwhelming research networks; environmental information is often heavily under-used because it requires a high level of expertise and computing capacity, making environmental data and digital solutions not yet a commodity by the landholders, farmers, and ecosystem regeneration practitioners, institutions and policy-makers, amongst others.

The Open Earth Monitor project aims to build a cyberinfrastructure that is User-driven and Open Source to provide cutting-edge data science tools to a diversity of European and global programs, actions and society. For the next four years, GFZ will support this Europe Horizon project with user dialog, development of biomass estimation tools and a global forest GHG emissions monitor.

Get more information about the project, activities, missions and upcoming workshops:https://earthmonitor.org/

Role of GFZ in detail

GFZ has a number of key roles in the Open-Earth-Monitor project:

• GFZ is co-leading the work on user-driven system design and FAIR data workflows and has an important role in the assessment of stakeholder engagement and user needs.
• Another major task is the development of biomass estimation tools and to compile and process existing biomass data at European and global levels. This contains the assessment and processing of available biomass datasets (space-based, in-situ) and the implementation of an open source tool to combine forest biomass estimates from different EO and ground-based data sources.
• Furthermore, GFZ will be leading the combination of different data sources for the development of a global forest GHG emissions monitor that can the also be linked to the different commodities and land use systemsrelated to oil palm, tropical timber, soy, beef and cacao.

Scientific contact:

Prof. Martin Herold
Section head 1.4 Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
Telegrafenberg
14473 Potsdam
Phone: +49 331 288-1190
Email: martin.herold@gfz-potsdam.de

Nora Meyer zu Erpen
Section 1.4 Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
Telegrafenberg
14473 Potsdam
Email: nora.meyer.zu.erpen@gfz-potsdam.de