Ecosystems and sustainable agricultural landscapes fulfil a whole host of ecosystem functions that are essential for life on our planet. A huge number of long-standing and standardized ecosystem health and monitoring approaches of bio-and geodiversity exist and are increasingly integrating RS based monitoring approaches. Unfortunately, these approaches in monitoring, data storage, analysis, prognosis and assessment still do not satisfy the future requirements of information and digital knowledge processing of the 21st century. If we want to understand the complexity of our system, we have to apply a holistic RS monitoring approach.
Traits and trait variations exist at all spatiotemporal scales. Traits are the crucial interface between different ecosystem domains, coupling of in-situ and RS monitoring approaches and are proxy indicators for ecosystem- and human health interactions. RS traits can be used to quantify the genesis-, structural-, functional-, and taxonomic geo- and biodiversity, vegetation health and indikatores of land use intensity.
In this presentation, we present the development of an “EcoSystem Integrity – RS/Modelling Service (ESIS). The basis of the ESIS idea is that close-range, air-and spaceborne sensors/EO sensors can monitor traits as well as trait variations in vegetation, soil, geomorphology, water quality, land-use-intensity and social-ecological systems. In the future, close-range, air- and spaceborne multisensor and multitemporal RS technologies (optical RS Data, RADAR, TIR Data) will be combined in the ESIS to make modular traits and trait variations quantifiable in a fast and standardized way in only a few steps. ESIS will implement the concepts of data science
