description
- NATURA 2000, an endeavour in the spirit of the Convention of Biological Diversity (Rio, 1992), is one of the success stories among pan-European initiatives and one of the worldâs most effective legal instruments concerning biodiversity and nature conservation. The EU Habitats Directive (council directive 92/43/ECC) requires a standardised monitoring of the habitat types and a reporting every six years. For this reason, an operational, objective, economically priced and as far as possible automated application is required. The rapidly developing remote sensing sensor technique and also new image processing methods offer new possibilities to apply remote sensing data for NATURA 2000 monitoring. Today, with (i) GMES as an umbrella for utilizing latest EO-based achievements form both space- and in-situ sensors to provide European solutions for global problems of the environment-security-nexus, (ii) INSPIRE as a pan-European endeavor of obeying standards and other prerequisites of interoperable use, and (iii) the vision of a unified and integrated (i.e. single) European Information Space (SEIS), set the stage for a technologically mature, integrated, and user-centric system, more effectively to be used than ever. Users are in need, as imposed by the legally binding character of the directives, and this is what this project will service, from European to local scale. MS.MONINA follows a pan-European, multi-scale approach that on the one hand reflects the specifics and the variety of habitats in the different biogeographical regions, and on the other hand guides the specifications of the service chains and their implementations as service cases and pilots. The multi-scale (MS) concept reflects the fact that on different (administrative) levels there are specific requirements for sensitive sites-related reporting, monitoring, management etc.