Speaker: Martin Herold is professor of geoinformation science and remote sensing at Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Location: CGIS South S050
Title: Remote sensing science 2.0: opportunities and challenges in human-satellite interactions for land monitoring
Abstract:
Our living environment is changing fast and information on where and how land change is happening is in high demand, i.e. since many policies and land-based activities are causing or trying to influence how changes occur in many societally relevant areas. There is increasing amount of free-and-open remote sensing datasets for the past and expected in the future (i.e. coming from the Sentinels satellites). This creates increasingly longer and denser time-series observation data for synoptic, more consistent and transparent global view on the human activities on the land surface and related changes on a detailed local level. For example, a new series of satellites with free and open data policy from the US, Europe and Brazil/China, arguably provide the most important improvements in temporal revisit and continuity, and thus allow for improved assessments of dynamics on the space-time scales where many important human-induced changes on the land surface; also in near-real time. This level of information and transparency created by satellite observations will create unprecedented opportunities for interactions of satellites, science and society. This fits with more general developments in the ‘2.0 world’ that put increasing attention on society’s expectations of the benefits that satellites and technology may help provide. Specifically, individual citizens or citizen organizations are potentially interested in knowing where things are and how things in their environment are changing.
There are important opportunities to engage citizens in multiple ways. On the one hand there are the citizen observer networks that can play an important role in improving remote sensing studies through providing local information and knowledge. However, the notion of citizen science is much more complex than simply organizing and training skilled ‘hired hands’ for data collection. People engage in citizen science activities for a wide diversity of motivations and reasons including self-fulfillment, enjoyment and social capital. In addition, and this is sometimes overlooked in parts of the citizen science literature, citizen science can empower the participants. By making available reliable data about specific places, local inhabitants may be able to use those data for their own benefit, for example to challenge industries and governments or to report on their performance in mitigating climate change.
So with the arrival of Sentinels we are starting to create data streams that go beyond expert users but offer avenues to engage with society and provide more direct contributions and benefits than before. However, these promises still largely need to materialize and their challenges addressed in full. To engage these potentials and challenges, I provide case studies for monitoring tropical deforestation. This is a worldwide issue since both the drivers causing forest loss and the resulting impacts are related to both local and global scales and linked to major policy and societal engagements (i.e. REDD+). We will present experiences with the Google Earth Engine that reduces some of the complicating issues in using remote sensing for a wider societal audience, and show examples how near-real time satellite monitoring stimulates participation and interest in forest monitoring and assessments. I will highlight how this all could help towards “Remote Sensing Science 2.0” driven by interactions and networking with citizens and society and their motivations.
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