GIOBIO

GIOBIO is an operational European project devoted to the global biosphere monitoring within the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (land.copernicus.eu). We aim to set up operational infrastructures for deriving biophysical vegetation variables from remote sensing observations on global scale, both in near-real-time (NRT) and off-line mode to support users in the field of environmental and other terrestrial applications. Global maps of Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR), and Fraction of vegetation cover (FCOVER) will be derived from VEGETATION/SPOT satellite data at 1 km spatial resolution every 10 days. Products will be accessible freely through the SDI portal (www.geoland2.eu). The provision of biophysical variables in NRT supports the day-to-day monitoring of surface conditions, and helps final users and decision makers to react appropriately in case of irregularities, to anticipate and manage potentially arising problems. Offline 15-year time series of variables will be provided, which are essential for discerning trends, detecting anomalies, analysing inter-annual variability and identifying high risk areas.

This research will be framed into the CREAF-CEAB-CSIC-UAB Global Ecology Unit research on remote sensing. The main activities of the CREAF group in the GIOBIO project are:

1. To provide scientific support to the Belgian remote sensing institute VITO in the operational implementation of the algorithms developed at INRA-Avignon for global monitoring of vegetation variables within the geoland2 FP7 pre-operational project. We are responsible of the algorithm design justification and update of the ATBD to GIO operational service for the application of algorithms at global scale, both at NRT and off-line mode.

2. To conduct the theoretical validation of the algorithm and to participate in the scientific validation of first estimates of global biophysical variables (LAI, FAPAR and FCOVER) to ensure the quality of the products to be distributed in GIO operational service.