Using earth observation for preservation of landscapes and animal habitats

There is widespread attention to address global biodiversity decline. Monitoring progress towards this aspiration is critical. In Europe more than 115 million hectares need to be protected under the Birds and Habitats Directive. Regular monitoring shows however that at the EU level only 16% of the protected habitats under the Habitats Directive have a favourable conservation status. Monitoring also shows that one third of all land habitats are currently under threat, causing a decline in habitat health and extent. Traditional approaches to monitoring however are labour intensive, expensive and slow to be updated. In this rapidly changing environment, how can we monitor habitats more frequently to facilitate their proper management and conservation?

Motivation

The Dutch Natura 2000 site Meijendel-Berkheide is one of the sites that needs to be protected under the Birds and Habitat Directive. One of the major threats is shrub and tree encroachment into areas with grey and white dunes. Monitoring this encroachment can be done effectively with easy accessible high spatial and temporal remote sensing data that provides valuable information on changes to the conservation managers . It enables the terrain managers to make reliable estimates of the most cost effective way to stop the encroachment. Traditional vegetation mapping, which are also used to derive habitat maps, are normally only updated once in the twelve years since it is labour intensive and therefore costly.

Solution

In the Netherlands, high resolution satellite imagery are easily accessible through the national satellite portal. Moreover, the Dutch elevation database (AHN) is updated every six years and freely available. A methodology has been developed that uses these easy accessible remote sensing data sources to detect changes in the vegetation structure of targeted habitats, based on respectively vegetation height and vegetation cover. This was developed in cooperation with terrain managers from the coastal nature area Meijendel-Berkheide (Province Zuid-Holland, the Netherlands). We combined LiDAR-data from AHN2 (2008) and AHN3 (2014) with very high resolution satellite imagery from the similar time period in order to detect changes in vegetation structure at 1 meter spatial resolution. The existing habitat map was used to develop a protocol to find Grey Dunes that showed significant changes in vegetation structure between 2008 and 2014.

Impact and future perspective

The methods applied to Meijendel-Berkheide were effective in detecting vegetation change, and were well-received by the landscape managers who are interested in using these technologies to support their traditional vegetation mapping with regular updates of changes in the vegetation structure

Remote sensing was found to have opportunities for upscaling impacts to national wide operational monitoring of changes in the vegetation structure of all habitat types which is essential information for the development of effective management and protection plans