This Task Group was formed to remove barriers and exploit UK Earth Observation capabilities for scientific inquiry, monitoring, understanding ecosystem services of, and informing related climate action of peatlands.
Purpose
Remove barriers and exploit UK Earth Observation (EO) capabilities for scientific inquiry, monitoring, understanding ecosystem services of, and informing related climate action of peatlands.
The aim of this Task Group has been to develop a prototype demonstrator to showcase the potential of state-of-the-art UK EO capabilities to inform solutions to environmental questions in near real time. The demonstrator was unveiled at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021.
Scientific aim: To exploit EO data, to assess health of peatlands. In the first instance, to use surface albedo and LST, to validate against the long in situ record, and to demonstrate that EO data can be used in this way to monitor peatland recovery in small UK peatlands.
Tasks
Task 1 Build demo to showcase EO capability and use of climate satellite data for utilisation to answer peatland science questions, Government family information requirements and meet emerging needs of peatland land managers.
Task 2 Identify seamless supply chain challenges, particularly those that are technical, related to data awareness, processing, access including commercial license arrangements.
Task 3 Explore potential mechanisms e.g. protocols, kitemark, certification for mapping transparently level of confidence, uncertainty (including how this changes if combining with other datasets e.g. field data/socio-economic data), and treatment of, and/or other aspects of climate service quality assurance.
Outcome
The Peatlands demonstrator – on public display at COP26 – is a simple example of a small-scale climate service derived from satellite data. It exploits the stability and longevity of climate quality data from the MODIS platform, to provide a long term, stable record of surface temperature, albedo and other derived quantities, at km scale resolution, for the whole of the UK.
The output has been designed with users from a non-EO background in mind. As such, access to data is from a simple, web-based front end, which allows simple timeseries and map-based visualisations, and data download in several formats, in human-readable format, and a choice of output grid.
The simplicity of design, clear supply chain and small team, allows identification and separation of issues and challenges arising when developing small scale climate services, which are presented here as learning outcomes and opportunities.
Access to the demo project is available from Assimila. Username and Password are available on request from Gerardo Lopez-Saldana at Assimila.
Members:
- Fred Worrall, University of Durham (Associate Member)
- Donna Lyndsay, Ordnance Survey
- Lynne Allan, Ordnance Survey
- Jason Hopkins, Ordnance Survey
- Jane Lewis, Assimila
- Gerado Lopez Saldana, Assimila
- Daniella Pasculli, CGI
- Darren Ghent, NCEO