Tropical BIOdiversity monitoring with COPernicus Sentinel-2 satellites – BioCop

Monitoring status and changes in function and composition of ecosystems is an important challenge: operational applications are urgently awaited by ecologists and deciders in order to identify solutions against the accelerating erosion of biodiversity. Megadiverse tropical forests are the focus of particular attention from scientific community as they show exceptional contribution to terrestrial biodiversity and a key role for global climate regulation and biogeochemical cycles. They are also particularly threatened because of direct human activity and climate change. We still have limited understanding of the complex processes linking biodiversity to ecosystem functions and environmental factors, and ecologists need information to help bridge the spatial gap between fine scale measurements collected in situ and coarse scale observation currently acquired from satellites to monitor regional and global processes. Such spatial gap is a limitation for the improved understanding of controls on biodiversity and the integration of subtle but important changes occurring at species and species assemblage scale into global models.
Scientific evidences based on airborne high spatial resolution imaging spectroscopy illustrate the capacity to map several dimensions of canopy biodiversity, even in tropical forest. Unfortunately this technology is not operational for large scale monitoring. Sentinel-2 satellites combine frequent revisit period, fine spatial resolution and multispectral sensors. They represent the best opportunity to upscale current methods derived from imaging spectroscopy from site to region scale. The potential and limitations of Sentinel-2 for mapping biodiversity has to be assessed in order to develop methods for operational monitoring and contribute to the preparation of the next generation of satellites.
BioCop offers to address this challenge by identifying the potential and limitations of Sentinel-2 satellites for mapping indicators of biodiversity and ecosystem functions in tropical forests and answers the critical need for operational monitoring of vegetation properties. To achieve this goal, we will implement a scaling up approach, from field observations to airborne imaging spectroscopy to satellite data, combining experimental data and physical modeling. After the validation of our protocol, we will implement at regional scale approach over the Neotropics.
BioCop is built upon strong collaborations among tropical ecologists, remote sensing experts and physicists, and it combines extensive field data collection (e.g. plot inventories and ground sensors), and airborne imaging spectroscopy, 3D radiative transfer modeling, It also builds upon a national infrastructure to ensure data availability, opportunities for methodological transfer and maximal impact and dissemination of the results obtained to end user communities for remote sensing products, including the ecologist community.
Finally, the consortium of this project is involved in regional and international scientific networks. Methods, results and maps produced during the project aim at directly contributing to the scientific community working on French Guiana in order to improve knowledge and understanding of ecological processes and challenges in this region, and raise awareness of deciders on the exceptional richness of this territory. At international scale, the scientific team of the project is involved in the Biodiversity Observation Network of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO BON). The mission of GEO BON is to identify a set of essential biodiversity variables which will allow monitoring information about relevant dimensions of biodiversity (including community composition, ecosystem functions) by linking in situ measurements with satellite observations. BioCop will contribute to this international scientific network and help defining priorities and conservation challenges based on current and future Earth observation resources.