BiomassMon – Biomass Monitoring and Surveying (2013)

Cooperating Bodies:

EFTAS Fernerkundung Technologietransfer GmbH: www.eftas.com
and
Fraunhofer-Institut für Umwelt-, Sicherheits- und Energietechnik UMSICHT: www.umsicht.fraunhofer.de

Motivation:

The European Copernicus Programme (formerly GMES – Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) is approaching its active phase. Copernicus will provide a range of geoinformation and offer German administrations and service providers the usage of innovative technologies, which aren’t available on a larger scale to date. There is an urgent need to advertise the usage potential of the Copernicus Sentinel as well as the national missions to potential consumers like politics, administration, private industries, or service providers. With the BiomassMon project, the possibilities of developing a remote-sensing-based vegetation surveying and monitoring system are studied. This study works in hand with the national plans of moving over to renewable energy sources and to state-wide strategies of utilizing available biomass source for energy generation by offering answers on the national political level as well as community-based concerns like the ideal locations and management strategies for biomass plantations. To assure the accuracy of the research, test sites are considered with all available vegetation including forest and agriculture but also subsidiary vegetation sites like the sides of roads, river banks or unploughed strips between fields.

Goal:

The technical goal of this project is the assessment and evaluation of remote sensing methods to derive the biomass potential (biomass quality and quantity) based on information from satellite-borne sensors of the Copernicus Sentinel as well as national missions as well as the modelling of the biomass sources to evaluate its potential. Remote sensing technologies for mapping of forest and agricultural areas have always been targeted for different thematic settings. In this project, such previous studies will be evaluated and adapted for integration in the modelling of biomass potentials. The core of this research is biomass surveying and monitoring of landscape conservation projects as there are currently neither data sources regarding its biomass quantities and qualities, nor structured approaches for the use of remote sensing data. Collaboration with potential end users of the data products (i.e. biomass utilisation companies etc.) will be sought to outline the range of information needed for a quantitative evaluation of biomass potentials for the given areas. The final product will be a listing of all objects with their attributes that can be derived from remote sensing data sets in order to be implemented in a wide-ranged biomass potential evaluation.