A new system is being considered for inclusion in the EU’s Earth Observation programme, Copernicus, to estimate water-use by plants evapotranspiration and to improve crop water-use productivity.

The Land Surface Temperature Monitoring (LSTM) mission will be able to identify the temperatures of individual fields and would be more than 400 times as detailed as what is delivered by the current Sentinel satellite land surface temperature sensors.

The increased resolution and precision of LSTM will enable specialists to calculate in real time how much water different plants require in different areas, and how often those plants need to be irrigated. It could also be used to help predict drought conditions.

The LSTM mission will complement the existing family of Copernicus satellites, sentinels, for observing the land and coastal areas, and will hopefully become an operational spacecraft within the next decade.

Our senior remote sensing specialist, Radoslaw Guzinski, is one of the authors behind the Mission Requirements Document, and we will follow the activities closely in the coming years.

As part of our AI4Earth grant funded by Microsoft and National Geographic Society, Torsten Bondo is in Washington DC for the annual National Geographic Explorer Festival.

It is an extremely exciting and inspiring venue featuring marine biologists, glaciologists, mountaineers, photographers and many other people with an interest in natural sciences.

Torsten Bondo is there to discuss our Uganda project using AI and satellites to assist agricultural irrigation schemes and safeguard the scarce water resources. A method that has the potential to work on a global scale.

Berlingske Media has published an article about the project [in Danish].

DID YOU KNOW

You can get bathymetry data from satellites?

Bathymetry is a key element in Hydrodynamic Modelling and Marine Spatial Planning activities.

Accurate and detailed bathymetry data is therefore an important factor for a successful implementation of a sustainable Blue Economy.

We celebrate World Oceans Day with an example of a bathymetry map from an area with intense focus on Offshore Wind Energy.

Here the Satellite-Derived Bathymetry has been merged with other existing data sets to create a seamless, fully updated and detailed bathymetry layer.

In recent years, advances in the satellite technology and physical modelling has allowed for vast improvements in the accuracy and availability of Satellite-Derived Bathymetry data.

It is also much more cost-efficient than traditional survey methods and mitigates the environmental impact of onsite surveys.

To learn more, visit:

The past two weeks Silvia Huber and Daniel Druce have been in Honduras, where they have held a hands-on training session on using specialized remote sensing tools for forest monitoring with our partner, Forests of the World (Verdens Skove) and assessed the results in the field.

The aim of the training was to teach local key individuals from Forests of the World how to use Google Earth Engine and other tools for monitoring pine forests affected by the destructive pine bark beetle, including the methodology of a fire risk analysis.

We also evaluated the effectiveness of the results, we have created for pine bark beetle monitoring. Few areas are currently under attack from pine bark beetles, which limits the validation results, but attacks are expected in the near future, which is why it is important to develop monitoring systems now so they are in place when the attacks happen again.

Burnt areas were easily detected, which is good news as both threats cause the pine trees to turn red. Therefore, it is likely, that it will also prove a good indicator of pine bark beetle attacks but further validation is necessary.

Our training was well received, and we look forward to continuing our activities in Honduras with Forests of the World.

Forest of the World has written a blog post about our joint ventures in Honduras [in Danish], follow the link.

Today is World Environment Day, and we want to highlight the importance of wetlands.

Wetlands are vital ecosystems for countless of species and are among the world’s most productive environments. The properties of wetlands serve as Ecosystem services ranging from freshwater supply to climate change mitigation.

Wetlands are sensitive to atmospheric disturbances, and the ecosystem services that many livelihoods depend on are threatened.

90% of all UN member states have ratified the Ramsar Convention, which provides the framework for the conservation and wise-use of wetlands and their resources.

We are part of a project led by the Ramsar Center for Eastern Africa (RAMCEA), setting out to explore the potential of Earth Observation satellite data for taking stock of and monitoring wetlands.

The project has demonstrated how Earth Observation can support wetland monitoring in Uganda and with continued training sessions can become a valuable tool for wetland managers and practitioners, not only in Uganda, but potentially also paving the way for other East African countries to achieve a complete wetland inventory in the future.

To learn more, please visit:

A new rainfall record in March was followed by a very dry April with record sunshine hours.

Recent weather patterns in Denmark is giving us an opportunity to show you how satellites can be used to extract soil #moisture from the Sentinel-1 radar satellites.

Using cloud-penetrating Sentinel-1 observations we were able to get almost daily soil moisture measurements in both months, despite March having only 119 sunshine hours compared to 274 hours in April.

The images show the monthly average surface soil moisture for March and April this year and clearly illustrates the unusually wet and dry conditions compared to previous years.

DID YOU KNOW?

Soil moisture is a key variable to understand many environmental processes such as vegetation health, #drought and #flood risks and plays a large role in climate models.

Changes in soil moisture of the top few centimeters of soil, greatly influences the characteristics of the soil, which makes it possible to measure with radar instruments mounted on satellites.

DHI GRAS is working together with DHI on assimilating satellite based soil moisture observations into complex hydrological models.

Our Urban Heat Island data can be found in the Sustainability Report 2019 from Rødovre municipality. The yearly report is part of the municipality’s Agenda 21 strategy, where they use sustainability as the basis for the development of Rødovre.

We provided a land surface temperature map, that illustrates the large variance in temperatures across the municipality depending on the urban land use. The map shows a 15 degree difference between some areas, which is dependent on the presence of vegetation and water bodies, due to their “cool down”-effect in contrast to the heating effect from the built-up areas.

We have previously done similar work for the municipality of Copenhagen, where we found a 12 degree difference between areas in the city throughout a very warm and dry summer.

UHIs are a concern in many cities, and known to have significant impacts on the lives of the residents in urban areas as well as the urban environment.

Interested in using satellite data to map Urban Heat Islands for your municipality? Contact us at gras@dhigroup.com