Ernesto Lopez-Baeza
University of Valencia, Spain
Title: Earth observation in support of sustainability soil, plant and water science. Innovative role of Copernicus Global Land Service products
Biography
Biography: Ernesto Lopez-Baeza
Abstract
Water in the soil is probably the most significant factor affecting plant growth. Productivity depends on water and both, drought and excess water, cause significant crop damages. People depend upon plants for food, being population limited by the productivity of land and more significantly in less developed regions. Production will have to far outpace population growth as the developing world grows prosperous and healthy. Environmental sustainability implies the securement of food, efficient resources management and equitable use of water.
Earth Observation technology can collect data to monitor land and support land management, agronomic planning and forest management, crop productivity and vegetation phenology, as well as water resources management. This paper shows that Earth Observation constitutes a new significant tool for sustainable growth in soil, plant and natural resources on Earth as the Conference motto states.
The Climatology from Satellites Group of the University of Valencia has a long experience using Earth Observation remote sensing techniques to deal with different land surface and atmospheric parameters in the context of the definition of a Water Cycle Observatory in the Valencia Anchor Station validation site. Currently, the major involvement now is precisely the establishment of protocols for the validation of Copernicus land surface products such as soil moisture, fraction of absorbed photosynthetic active radiation -fAPAR, leaf area index -LAI, terrestrial chlorophyll, etc.
This presentation will clearly show the strategy followed by the Climatology from Satellites Group to validate the above-mentioned parameters over the Valencia Anchor Station and the use of some of those parameters to assist optimising water management decisions in the framework of the RESEWAM-O (REmote SEnsing for WAter Management Optimisation) European Innovation Partnership on Water (EIP Water)