Final Report Summary - ZAPÁS (Assessment and Monitoring of Forest Resources in the Framework of the EU-Russia Space Dialogue)
Executive Summary:
ZAPÁS (Rus.: Запaс) – was chosen as project acronym since this Russian word is used in forest terminology for growing stock volume or forest stock, which is one of the envisaged products of this project. Addressing the important issue of assessing forest resources in the boreal zone, particularly in Siberia, the ZAPÁS project is aiming to actively support the EU-Russian Space Dialogue. ZAPÁS delivers innovative procedures and new products for forest resource assessment and monitoring using jointly ESA and ROSCOSMOS satellite data. In accordance with the FP7 call SPA.2010.3.2-01 EU-Russia Cooperation in GMES (SICA), ZAPÁS focuses on the synergistic exploration of Earth Observation (EO) data provided by ESA and ROSCOSMOS and on the exchange of methodological know-how in processing Earth Observation data.
The geographical focus of research and development within the ZAPÁS project is Central Siberia, which contains two administrative districts of Russia, namely Krasnoyarsk Kray and Irkutsk Oblast. The project team aims at developing Earth observation products at two geographical scales. Improved regional scale land cover and biomass maps will be derived for Central Siberia to (a) improve existing coarse scale land cover databases, (b) link them with biomass information from medium resolution Radar imagery, and (c) use these up-to-date land-cover and forest resource geo-information as input for a full carbon accounting. The results of the terrestrial ecosystem full carbon accounting are addressed to the Federal Forest Agency as federal instance. The high resolution products comprise biomass and change maps for selected local sites. These products are addressed to support the UN FAO Forest Resources Assessment as well as the requirements of the local forest inventories. The team consists of a balanced distribution of leading experts from Europe and Russia. The Russian partners come from two geographically different, federal regions: the city of Moscow and the Krasnoyarsk Kray. An external review board, the ZAPÀS Advisory Board (ZAB) has been installed to involve representatives of the Russian space agency as well as the Federal Forest Agency and connect ZAPÁS to the United Nations Forest Resource Assessment 2010 (FRA 2010) and further international programs.
Project Context and Objectives:
Forest Monitoring in the Framework of the EU-Russia Space Dialogue
Russia, the European Union’s largest neighbor, is considered by the European Parliament as a key player in its efforts to protect the global climate and environment. The strengthening of genuine strategic partnerships founded on common interests and shared values are strongly supported. The ZAPÁS project represents such a strategic partnership between well acknowledged Russian and European scientists in the field of Earth Observation with the support, direct involvement and contribution of the Russian and European Space Agencies.
A further important international agreement is the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, providing mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gases and tackle global warming. The intensification of collaboration between the EU and Russia on environmental issues is a welcome step forward in bringing ecological sustainability and social responsibility more to the forefront in economic dealings. This makes the harmonization of European and Russian environmental policies and legislation particularly important. The collaborative development of advanced methods and the exchange of Earth Observation data fully compliant to the cooperation policy established between the EU and Russia.
The ZAPÁS network is involved in international programs such as GEO FCT (Group on Earth Observation – Forest Carbon Tracking), GOFC-GOLD (Global Observation of Forest Cover and Land Dynamics) and NEESPI (Northern Eurasian Environmental Science Partnership Initiative) through which support to international conventions related to the global environmental issues, such as UNCBD, UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, is ensured.
Multi-scale Assessment and Validation of Central Siberian Forest Maps
Looking at the large-sale distribution of the Siberian Taiga, the systematic monitoring of forest dynamics is still challenging. Satellite earth observation is the only alternative for a frequent monitoring of biomass-decreasing processes such as clear cutting, selective logging, fire, insect infestation, but also afforestation and forest succession processes (White et al., 2005; Yatabe et al., 1995; Kasischke et al., 1992).
ZAPÁS investigates and cross-validates methodologies using both Russian and European Earth observation data to foster the development of a worldwide observation system. The methodologies include state-of-the-art optical and radar retrieval algorithms and their improvement as well as investigation of innovative synergistic approaches (Thiel et al. 2009). Products include biomass maps and biomass change for the years 2007-2010 on a local scale, a biomass and improved land cover map on the regional scale, and a 1 km scale land cover map as input to a carbon accounting model. These products serve the inventory community (e.g. FAO Forest Resource Assessment) as well as the Kyoto Protocol implementation bodies. In specified regions land cover change dynamics, specifically forest regrowth and land abandonment, were investigated.
One of the key perspective goals of the ZAPÁS initiative is to overcome still existing uncertainties in Carbon Accounting. Since the synergistic biomass – land cover product will be one new parameter of the full ecosystem carbon accounting (conducted at IIASA) some general future improvements will be considered for carbon accounting, such as in-situ and multi-scale Earth observation synergies and combining regional land cover mapping and biomass products. Integrated concept for forest resource assessment and forest geo-information cross validation to be implemented by the ZAPÁS project.
Wall-to-wall mapping of local test sites in Central Siberia
With the use of four annual SAR backscatter mosaics, provided by JAXA’s Kyoto and Carbon Initiative, a systematic matting framework was designed and applied for an area of 2 Mio. Ha in Central Siberia. Based on annual growing stock volume maps (with a spatial resolution of 25 m) for 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, further thematic products were generated, such as the Forest cover and disturbance maps for 2007 and 2010 and a reforestation probability map for 2010.
Cross-comparisons and validation of local-scale forest resource maps
The locally relevant information products have undergone a validation and quality assessment by integrating updated forest inventory data. For the first time high resolution growing stock maps (covering an area of 2 Mio. ha) could be validated using up-to-date forest inventory data. The results were comparable with literature values and varied within the relative RMSE range of 30 – 40 %. On the other hand, the biomass maps proved to be useful consistent information sources for detecting inconsistencies in the forest inventory. The validation of change maps was challenging since the availability of temporally fitting land cover change reference data is often problematic. However, the integration of the forest inventory database was successful for proving the spatiotemporal consistency of the forest cover change maps. Synergistic comparisons with Landsat-based land cover information could also state a general agreement of the forest cover change monitoring. Validation activities of an innovative reforestation probability map product with high resolution Resurs-DK-1 data resulted in an overall accuracy of 80 percent for the land cover change type of reforestation processes on abandoned agricultural lands.
Regional scale forest resource assessment
A regional coverage of the Central Siberian investigation area was realized by providing maps of growing stock volume (in cooperation with the ESA BIOMASAR-II Project), MODIS- based land cover and forest species map, and a hybrid Biomass and forest species map.
Terrestrial Ecosystems Full Carbon Accounting (FCA) for Central Siberia
A forest Ecosystems full verified carbon account for Central Siberia for 2009 was realized (Figure 3).
Taking into account the fuzzy character of full carbon account of forests for large territories, the methodology used was based on IIASA’s landscape-ecosystem approach (LEA) with following comparisons and mutual constraints with results received by independent methods. The LEA is used for designing the account boundaries and assessment of major pools and fluxes. An Integrated Land Information System (ILIS) serves as the information background of the Full Carbon Account (FCA). The ILIS is based on a system integration of all available ground data and multi-sensor remote sensing applications.
Results of calculation show that the region’s forests served in 2009 as a net carbon sink of 139.4 ± 35 Tg C yr-1 or 76± 19 g C m-2 yr-1. This result is to some extent anomalous due to unusually small distribution of fire during 2009. Comparisons with other sources supported the results of this study. However, they are to some extent approximate because other studies considered different regions and years of estimation. Overall, the results of the comparisons are satisfactory consistent. The study confirmed the crucial role of multi-sensor remote sensing concept in assessment of the carbon budget of terrestrial ecosystems, particularly forests.
Project Results:
A summary of the main results and foregrounds is given below. For detailed information the reader is referred to the uploaded final project report. The ZAPÁS results and foregrounds are:
- ESA/ROSCOSMOS satellite and in-situ database
- Random-Forest machine learning method suite for SAR-based biomass estimation
- Updates and quality-checked Forest inventory data of Central Siberian Test sites covering an area of more than 2 Mio. Hectares.
- Local scale maps with 25 m resolution of the Central Siberian forest test sites covering an area of 580.000 km², such as:
o Biomass maps (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010)
o Reforestation and Afforestation Map (2010)
o Forest cover and disturbance maps (2007, 2010)
- Regional scale Biomass map for Central Siberia
- Regional Scale Land cover map fir Central Siberia
- Regional Scale synergy map of Land cover and biomass for Central Siberia
- Resampled 1 km Land cover map
- Full terrestrial ecosystem Carbon account for Central Sibera for the year 2009 with 1 km spatial resolution
- More than 20 scientific publications in peer-reviewed cournals and conferences
Potential Impact:
The overarching goal of the ZAPÁS project within the EU-Russia Space Dialog was to initiate an inter- and transdsciplinary exchange of technically knowledge and methods in optical and Radar earth observation.
The project aims at the completion of a common forest resource geo-information database comprising the final release of the Improved Land cover Map for Central Siberia (WP5). Further on, the in-situ database is going to be integrated in the validation activities (WP9) of the local and regional scale forest resource maps. Beside the validation process the main milestone for the third year of the project is the implementation of the carbon accounting for Central Siberia. Therefore, the improved land cover database is being implemented in the IIASA GIS (WP6). The full terrestrial carbon assessment of Central Siberia’s Krasoyarsk Kray and Irkutsk Oblast will be conducted in WP 7. Project dissemination activities will be on-going from the, in particular by updating up the ZAPAS Web-portal (WP10) and integrating the ZAPAS results in the web portal of the Siberian Earth System Science Cluster (SIB-ESS-C). The results of the current running work packages were presented in related key conferences and published in peer reviewed journals.
The provision of improved synergetic regional scale joint biomass/ land cover map was realized and a resampled 1 km Forest and Land Cover Map was generated as a preparatory step for the carbon modelling. The terrestrial Ecosystem Full Carbon Accounting (FCA) was successfully realized for the reference year of 2009 by integrating updated land cover and growing stock information for the modeling area. The Cross-validation and comparisons of all biomass and land cover maps was finished in the third project period. An intensive validation workshop was realized in August 2013 at the Suchachev Institute of Forest with the FSU project members, including a two days validation field trip to the Bolshemurtinsk local test sites.
The validation process was finally discussed and concluded in a third project workshop, held in the Institute for Space Sciences at the Free University Berlin. The results of cross-comparisons between EO products and in-situ data were critically discussed and improved. A synergy paper is close to publication in a scientific journal. Attending mayor science meetings on land and forest monitoring as listed below affected an increased publicity and awareness of the project in the science community. New web-based clients were introduces with the ZAPAS-related Earth Observation monitor. The capabilities of a web-based time series analyses portal was demonstrated using ZAPAS examples leading to an increased visibility of the technology and the project in the scientific an industry-related community.
The project could bring together key experts in forestry, remote sensing and carbon modeling. State of the art optical and SAR data were acquired from ESA and Roscosmos satellite platforms which was not done before for forest monitoring. State of the art machine learning and image processing techniques were combined with up-to-date inventory techniques in Siberia. Results of the mapping and validation activities were published in international recognized open access journals. The main results of the project were presented at international scientific conferences. The project plays a key role for the European Space Agency for their activities in Siberia. The project could reach a local impact by convincing regional and local researchers and forest managers with the Web tools provided by the Consortium. The result is that globally available satellite data (such as MODIS time series) reach local relevance. The forest management stakeholder communities in Krasnoyarsk use the multi-source satellite database combined with near-realtime satellite monitoring capabilities in the data middleware system. The project initiates the application and increases the interoperability of satellite data and products for decision makers and researchers from different disciplines. From the scientific point of view the connection of local in situ data and ecological knowledge with state of the art models and satellite products could generate a sound knowledge concerning product validation and calibration. For the ecosystem of the Central Siberian Taiga forests the best available methods and map products were cross-compared and validated against each other, which was not been conducted in such a intensity. Further, new product synergies were developed and tested.
List of Websites:
The results being achieved during the project are presented and disseminated through the bilingual ZAPÁS web portal. Acting as the main communication platform of the EU and Russian scientific and stakeholder community on forest resource assessment the ZAPAS web portal is delivering recent reports and scientific outcomes. The above mentioned geo-information products on forest biomass distribution and dynamics are being disseminated through the ZAPÁS web portal available at http://zapas.uni-jena.de. Further, the ZAPÁS data layers are implemented in the Siberian Earth System Science Cluster (SIB-ESS-C) available at http://sibessc.uni-jena.de. The Siberian Earth System Science Cluster (SIB-ESS-C) is a spatial data infrastructure to facilitate Earth System Science in Siberia and consists of operational tools for multi-source data access and time-series analysis. Therefore data from remote sensing satellites, climate data from meteorological stations, and outcomes of research projects are available. The system comprises interoperable interfaces for data visualization, access, and analysis. A main objective is to provide a wide variety of operational information products free of charge along with a user-friendly web portal for time-series analysis and monitoring.
ZAPÁS Project Coordination Team
Christian Hüttich, Christian Thiel & Chris Schmullius
Friedrich Schiller University
Department of Geography
Grietgasse 6
07743 Jena
Germany
Tel: +49-3641-948886
Fax: +49-3641-948882
Email: christian dot huettich att uni-jena.de
Web: http://www.eo.uni-jena.de
ZAPÁS (Rus.: Запaс) – was chosen as project acronym since this Russian word is used in forest terminology for growing stock volume or forest stock, which is one of the envisaged products of this project. Addressing the important issue of assessing forest resources in the boreal zone, particularly in Siberia, the ZAPÁS project is aiming to actively support the EU-Russian Space Dialogue. ZAPÁS delivers innovative procedures and new products for forest resource assessment and monitoring using jointly ESA and ROSCOSMOS satellite data. In accordance with the FP7 call SPA.2010.3.2-01 EU-Russia Cooperation in GMES (SICA), ZAPÁS focuses on the synergistic exploration of Earth Observation (EO) data provided by ESA and ROSCOSMOS and on the exchange of methodological know-how in processing Earth Observation data.
The geographical focus of research and development within the ZAPÁS project is Central Siberia, which contains two administrative districts of Russia, namely Krasnoyarsk Kray and Irkutsk Oblast. The project team aims at developing Earth observation products at two geographical scales. Improved regional scale land cover and biomass maps will be derived for Central Siberia to (a) improve existing coarse scale land cover databases, (b) link them with biomass information from medium resolution Radar imagery, and (c) use these up-to-date land-cover and forest resource geo-information as input for a full carbon accounting. The results of the terrestrial ecosystem full carbon accounting are addressed to the Federal Forest Agency as federal instance. The high resolution products comprise biomass and change maps for selected local sites. These products are addressed to support the UN FAO Forest Resources Assessment as well as the requirements of the local forest inventories. The team consists of a balanced distribution of leading experts from Europe and Russia. The Russian partners come from two geographically different, federal regions: the city of Moscow and the Krasnoyarsk Kray. An external review board, the ZAPÀS Advisory Board (ZAB) has been installed to involve representatives of the Russian space agency as well as the Federal Forest Agency and connect ZAPÁS to the United Nations Forest Resource Assessment 2010 (FRA 2010) and further international programs.
Project Context and Objectives:
Forest Monitoring in the Framework of the EU-Russia Space Dialogue
Russia, the European Union’s largest neighbor, is considered by the European Parliament as a key player in its efforts to protect the global climate and environment. The strengthening of genuine strategic partnerships founded on common interests and shared values are strongly supported. The ZAPÁS project represents such a strategic partnership between well acknowledged Russian and European scientists in the field of Earth Observation with the support, direct involvement and contribution of the Russian and European Space Agencies.
A further important international agreement is the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, providing mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gases and tackle global warming. The intensification of collaboration between the EU and Russia on environmental issues is a welcome step forward in bringing ecological sustainability and social responsibility more to the forefront in economic dealings. This makes the harmonization of European and Russian environmental policies and legislation particularly important. The collaborative development of advanced methods and the exchange of Earth Observation data fully compliant to the cooperation policy established between the EU and Russia.
The ZAPÁS network is involved in international programs such as GEO FCT (Group on Earth Observation – Forest Carbon Tracking), GOFC-GOLD (Global Observation of Forest Cover and Land Dynamics) and NEESPI (Northern Eurasian Environmental Science Partnership Initiative) through which support to international conventions related to the global environmental issues, such as UNCBD, UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, is ensured.
Multi-scale Assessment and Validation of Central Siberian Forest Maps
Looking at the large-sale distribution of the Siberian Taiga, the systematic monitoring of forest dynamics is still challenging. Satellite earth observation is the only alternative for a frequent monitoring of biomass-decreasing processes such as clear cutting, selective logging, fire, insect infestation, but also afforestation and forest succession processes (White et al., 2005; Yatabe et al., 1995; Kasischke et al., 1992).
ZAPÁS investigates and cross-validates methodologies using both Russian and European Earth observation data to foster the development of a worldwide observation system. The methodologies include state-of-the-art optical and radar retrieval algorithms and their improvement as well as investigation of innovative synergistic approaches (Thiel et al. 2009). Products include biomass maps and biomass change for the years 2007-2010 on a local scale, a biomass and improved land cover map on the regional scale, and a 1 km scale land cover map as input to a carbon accounting model. These products serve the inventory community (e.g. FAO Forest Resource Assessment) as well as the Kyoto Protocol implementation bodies. In specified regions land cover change dynamics, specifically forest regrowth and land abandonment, were investigated.
One of the key perspective goals of the ZAPÁS initiative is to overcome still existing uncertainties in Carbon Accounting. Since the synergistic biomass – land cover product will be one new parameter of the full ecosystem carbon accounting (conducted at IIASA) some general future improvements will be considered for carbon accounting, such as in-situ and multi-scale Earth observation synergies and combining regional land cover mapping and biomass products. Integrated concept for forest resource assessment and forest geo-information cross validation to be implemented by the ZAPÁS project.
Wall-to-wall mapping of local test sites in Central Siberia
With the use of four annual SAR backscatter mosaics, provided by JAXA’s Kyoto and Carbon Initiative, a systematic matting framework was designed and applied for an area of 2 Mio. Ha in Central Siberia. Based on annual growing stock volume maps (with a spatial resolution of 25 m) for 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, further thematic products were generated, such as the Forest cover and disturbance maps for 2007 and 2010 and a reforestation probability map for 2010.
Cross-comparisons and validation of local-scale forest resource maps
The locally relevant information products have undergone a validation and quality assessment by integrating updated forest inventory data. For the first time high resolution growing stock maps (covering an area of 2 Mio. ha) could be validated using up-to-date forest inventory data. The results were comparable with literature values and varied within the relative RMSE range of 30 – 40 %. On the other hand, the biomass maps proved to be useful consistent information sources for detecting inconsistencies in the forest inventory. The validation of change maps was challenging since the availability of temporally fitting land cover change reference data is often problematic. However, the integration of the forest inventory database was successful for proving the spatiotemporal consistency of the forest cover change maps. Synergistic comparisons with Landsat-based land cover information could also state a general agreement of the forest cover change monitoring. Validation activities of an innovative reforestation probability map product with high resolution Resurs-DK-1 data resulted in an overall accuracy of 80 percent for the land cover change type of reforestation processes on abandoned agricultural lands.
Regional scale forest resource assessment
A regional coverage of the Central Siberian investigation area was realized by providing maps of growing stock volume (in cooperation with the ESA BIOMASAR-II Project), MODIS- based land cover and forest species map, and a hybrid Biomass and forest species map.
Terrestrial Ecosystems Full Carbon Accounting (FCA) for Central Siberia
A forest Ecosystems full verified carbon account for Central Siberia for 2009 was realized (Figure 3).
Taking into account the fuzzy character of full carbon account of forests for large territories, the methodology used was based on IIASA’s landscape-ecosystem approach (LEA) with following comparisons and mutual constraints with results received by independent methods. The LEA is used for designing the account boundaries and assessment of major pools and fluxes. An Integrated Land Information System (ILIS) serves as the information background of the Full Carbon Account (FCA). The ILIS is based on a system integration of all available ground data and multi-sensor remote sensing applications.
Results of calculation show that the region’s forests served in 2009 as a net carbon sink of 139.4 ± 35 Tg C yr-1 or 76± 19 g C m-2 yr-1. This result is to some extent anomalous due to unusually small distribution of fire during 2009. Comparisons with other sources supported the results of this study. However, they are to some extent approximate because other studies considered different regions and years of estimation. Overall, the results of the comparisons are satisfactory consistent. The study confirmed the crucial role of multi-sensor remote sensing concept in assessment of the carbon budget of terrestrial ecosystems, particularly forests.
Project Results:
A summary of the main results and foregrounds is given below. For detailed information the reader is referred to the uploaded final project report. The ZAPÁS results and foregrounds are:
- ESA/ROSCOSMOS satellite and in-situ database
- Random-Forest machine learning method suite for SAR-based biomass estimation
- Updates and quality-checked Forest inventory data of Central Siberian Test sites covering an area of more than 2 Mio. Hectares.
- Local scale maps with 25 m resolution of the Central Siberian forest test sites covering an area of 580.000 km², such as:
o Biomass maps (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010)
o Reforestation and Afforestation Map (2010)
o Forest cover and disturbance maps (2007, 2010)
- Regional scale Biomass map for Central Siberia
- Regional Scale Land cover map fir Central Siberia
- Regional Scale synergy map of Land cover and biomass for Central Siberia
- Resampled 1 km Land cover map
- Full terrestrial ecosystem Carbon account for Central Sibera for the year 2009 with 1 km spatial resolution
- More than 20 scientific publications in peer-reviewed cournals and conferences
Potential Impact:
The overarching goal of the ZAPÁS project within the EU-Russia Space Dialog was to initiate an inter- and transdsciplinary exchange of technically knowledge and methods in optical and Radar earth observation.
The project aims at the completion of a common forest resource geo-information database comprising the final release of the Improved Land cover Map for Central Siberia (WP5). Further on, the in-situ database is going to be integrated in the validation activities (WP9) of the local and regional scale forest resource maps. Beside the validation process the main milestone for the third year of the project is the implementation of the carbon accounting for Central Siberia. Therefore, the improved land cover database is being implemented in the IIASA GIS (WP6). The full terrestrial carbon assessment of Central Siberia’s Krasoyarsk Kray and Irkutsk Oblast will be conducted in WP 7. Project dissemination activities will be on-going from the, in particular by updating up the ZAPAS Web-portal (WP10) and integrating the ZAPAS results in the web portal of the Siberian Earth System Science Cluster (SIB-ESS-C). The results of the current running work packages were presented in related key conferences and published in peer reviewed journals.
The provision of improved synergetic regional scale joint biomass/ land cover map was realized and a resampled 1 km Forest and Land Cover Map was generated as a preparatory step for the carbon modelling. The terrestrial Ecosystem Full Carbon Accounting (FCA) was successfully realized for the reference year of 2009 by integrating updated land cover and growing stock information for the modeling area. The Cross-validation and comparisons of all biomass and land cover maps was finished in the third project period. An intensive validation workshop was realized in August 2013 at the Suchachev Institute of Forest with the FSU project members, including a two days validation field trip to the Bolshemurtinsk local test sites.
The validation process was finally discussed and concluded in a third project workshop, held in the Institute for Space Sciences at the Free University Berlin. The results of cross-comparisons between EO products and in-situ data were critically discussed and improved. A synergy paper is close to publication in a scientific journal. Attending mayor science meetings on land and forest monitoring as listed below affected an increased publicity and awareness of the project in the science community. New web-based clients were introduces with the ZAPAS-related Earth Observation monitor. The capabilities of a web-based time series analyses portal was demonstrated using ZAPAS examples leading to an increased visibility of the technology and the project in the scientific an industry-related community.
The project could bring together key experts in forestry, remote sensing and carbon modeling. State of the art optical and SAR data were acquired from ESA and Roscosmos satellite platforms which was not done before for forest monitoring. State of the art machine learning and image processing techniques were combined with up-to-date inventory techniques in Siberia. Results of the mapping and validation activities were published in international recognized open access journals. The main results of the project were presented at international scientific conferences. The project plays a key role for the European Space Agency for their activities in Siberia. The project could reach a local impact by convincing regional and local researchers and forest managers with the Web tools provided by the Consortium. The result is that globally available satellite data (such as MODIS time series) reach local relevance. The forest management stakeholder communities in Krasnoyarsk use the multi-source satellite database combined with near-realtime satellite monitoring capabilities in the data middleware system. The project initiates the application and increases the interoperability of satellite data and products for decision makers and researchers from different disciplines. From the scientific point of view the connection of local in situ data and ecological knowledge with state of the art models and satellite products could generate a sound knowledge concerning product validation and calibration. For the ecosystem of the Central Siberian Taiga forests the best available methods and map products were cross-compared and validated against each other, which was not been conducted in such a intensity. Further, new product synergies were developed and tested.
List of Websites:
The results being achieved during the project are presented and disseminated through the bilingual ZAPÁS web portal. Acting as the main communication platform of the EU and Russian scientific and stakeholder community on forest resource assessment the ZAPAS web portal is delivering recent reports and scientific outcomes. The above mentioned geo-information products on forest biomass distribution and dynamics are being disseminated through the ZAPÁS web portal available at http://zapas.uni-jena.de. Further, the ZAPÁS data layers are implemented in the Siberian Earth System Science Cluster (SIB-ESS-C) available at http://sibessc.uni-jena.de. The Siberian Earth System Science Cluster (SIB-ESS-C) is a spatial data infrastructure to facilitate Earth System Science in Siberia and consists of operational tools for multi-source data access and time-series analysis. Therefore data from remote sensing satellites, climate data from meteorological stations, and outcomes of research projects are available. The system comprises interoperable interfaces for data visualization, access, and analysis. A main objective is to provide a wide variety of operational information products free of charge along with a user-friendly web portal for time-series analysis and monitoring.
ZAPÁS Project Coordination Team
Christian Hüttich, Christian Thiel & Chris Schmullius
Friedrich Schiller University
Department of Geography
Grietgasse 6
07743 Jena
Germany
Tel: +49-3641-948886
Fax: +49-3641-948882
Email: christian dot huettich att uni-jena.de
Web: http://www.eo.uni-jena.de
