The role of Earth observation in ecosystem accounting: A review of advances, challenges and future directions

Ioannis P. Kokkoris, Bruno Smets, Lars Hein, Giorgos Mallinis, Marcel Buchhorn, Stefano Balbi, Ján Černecký, Marc Paganini and Panayotis Dimopoulos

Ecosystem Services, 2024, vol. 70, issue C

Abstract: The European Space Agency (ESA) project “Pioneering Earth Observation Applications for the Environment – Ecosystem Accounting” (PEOPLE-EA) aimed to study and demonstrate the relevance of Earth Observation (EO) for ecosystem accounting in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Ecosystem accounts are inherently spatial accounts, with the implication that they strongly depend on the availability of spatially explicit datasets. In the project’s framework, an in-depth literature review of 113 scientific papers has shown EO data streams can be integrated to accelerate ecosystem account reporting. However, these workflows need to be further extended to support extent accounting that involves a more disaggregated ecosystem classification compared to land cover types. EO provides wall-to-wall monitoring and hence can contribute to provide reliable and consistent metrics on ecosystem condition, next to ecosystem extent. EO contribution is mainly to delineate and characterize ecosystem extent, structure, function and composition indices, and probably their distance from a reference condition, if not set too far back in time. The use of EO data for ecosystem services is more challenging, despite the well-established conceptual framework. EO data can support and accelerate ecosystem accounting under the standardised SEEA EA framework providing the most cost-effective way to collect large amounts of data in a standardised form with consistency in space and time.

Keywords: Ecosystem accounts; Ecosystem change; Ecosystem services; Ecosystem trend; EO; SEEA EA; Natural capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041624000664
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoser:v:70:y:2024:i:c:s2212041624000664

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2024.101659

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

More articles in Ecosystem Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().