Two of our UKEOF Working Groups, the Natural Capital WG and the Earth Observation Calibration and Validation WG, held a joint workshop on 1 May 2024 in London.
Workshop aims
Accurate assessments of natural capital are essential to enable the management of nature for the continued delivery of the benefits on which the economy and society rely. There is an urgent need to produce this data before our natural capital stocks diminish further. Despite ever-expanding volumes of earth observed data, evidence gaps on the quantity, quality and location of natural capital assets remain. Whilst earth observation data (e.g., from satellites & drones) can play a vital role, our ability to derive information from these data is constrained by a lack of suitable ground-based observations and a lack of clarity over what is needed. This workshop brought together EO and ground-based monitoring specialists with natural capital specialists from across the UK to explore novel ways to enhance environmental monitoring for natural capital assessments.
Outcomes
The first set of outcomes focused on the role of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded EO data hub and its potential interactions with this group. The group will encourage the EO data hub to:
- Ensure good metadata on existing products and their use is available and accessible
- Focus on the provision of centralised intermediate data products for the community to reduce overlaps and inefficiencies in data processing
- Interact with the wider monitoring community through this UKEOF group to better define user requirements for EO data (raw data, intermediate products, or final evidence). To facilitate this, work with this group to develop a business case for supporting effective interactions between the hub and those monitoring natural capital across the UK
- Encourage the EO data hub to connect to a centre providing field verification for EO products.
The second set of outcomes focused on the use of common measurements & definitions for natural capital reporting across the 4 nations of the UK, including:
- An agreed standardised and limited set of metrics all nations could agree to collect and report on, potentially linked to ONS reporting at UK scales. These metrics could be a subset of the nation-specific indicators already prioritised for national (not UK) needs. Some of these would be by EO (but perhaps not all)
- The use of a common set of land cover classes and land uses which scale between EO and field data collection, e.g., UKHab
- Standardised LIDAR data collection (resolution and frequency) across the UK, currently Scotland do not have any data.
These outcomes were linked to the needs of Local Authorities for easily accessible data products to help them with issues around private funding for Biodiversity and Carbon and the group suggested that:
- Public funding should be used as efficiently as possible, through partnership working to produce the data products needed
- OS offered an open door to work with them to provide a high-resolution product for the whole community including local authorities
- Ideally all four nations would agree on common approach for metrics for BNG reporting.
Overarching recommendations
- EO and Field data must be brought together more if EO products are going to be trusted and used by the whole community
- More partnership working across organisations and across countries is required, leading to less duplication and more efficiency in use of public funding
- Language is important if our products are going to be useful, language needs to practical and accessible for all
- Budgets for exploratory research, such as new and novel uses of EO need to include funding for aligned field campaigns which is available for all parties/partners
- If we are to use EO (or field) data within our monitoring strategies there is a need for long term operational budget lines. For field, EO and LIDAR programmes, assurance is needed that these data streams can be used long term
- Those monitoring natural capital need to engage with all modelling communities to ensure data are fit for purpose. This includes field and modelling communities especially EO and AI and processed based modellers e.g. land surface modelling. (Specific examples discussed: Earth system modelling, JULES and urban version on JULES, and ecological and forestry models, soil, air etc.)