Conference Agenda

The Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) is the world’s largest open-access repository for marine biodiversity data, containing over 136 million occurrence records from more than 5,000 datasets.

OBIS information supports research across a wide range of topics, including biogeography, climate change impacts, invasive species, and taxonomy. In this hands-on demonstration, we will introduce OBIS and the types of data it provides. Through recent research and ongoing projects, we will showcase the diverse applications of OBIS data. Practical examples will illustrate the multiple pathways for accessing OBIS data and demonstrate how it can be processed and integrated with other Earth observation datasets to address critical research questions.

At the end of the demonstration, participants are expected to gain a clear understanding of

(1) the types of information available through OBIS;

(2) how to access the data using various methods, including APIs, packages, the mapper, and exports;

(3) how to integrate OBIS data with other datasets;

(4) how to find support and collaborate with OBIS.

The demonstrations will use JupyterHub, and participants will have the opportunity to run analyses on their own computers.

The openEO community standard is revolutionizing how geospatial researchers access and analyze large-scale Earth Observation (EO) data. By abstracting technical complexities, openEO empowers researchers to focus on deriving meaningful insights from EO data, offering seamless access to diverse datasets and scalable processing capabilities.

This hands-on demonstration will provide participants with an accessible introduction to openEO, showcasing its potential for geospatial research. Participants will explore Jupyter notebooks designed to illustrate key workflows and applications.

The session will begin with an overview of openEO’s core concepts and practical functionality, using the Copernicus Dataspace Ecosystem deployment to access Sentinel mission data. Attendees will learn how openEO simplifies data discovery and processing, allowing researchers to address questions in biodiversity, climate, and land monitoring.

The second part will focus on real-world applications, spotlighting the ESA–World Ecosystem Extent Dynamics (WEED) project. This project demonstrates how openEO enables:

- The extraction of global training datasets, e.g. for biodiversity and ecosystem studies.

- Performing machine learning inference for e.g. ecosystem mapping.

- Scalable production of land, continental, and global-scale maps.

By highlighting this impactful use case, the session will illustrate how openEO enables researchers to effortlessly scale up their prove of concept, to a continental product. Thereby, enabling geospatial scientists to tackle global challenges supported by open and FAIR tooling.

Description: Agricultural expansion can destroy and fragment natural habitats, but agricultural areas if managed carefully, can still support biodiversity. The quality and biodiversity value of agricultural areas depends on factors such as land use intensity, composition, and configuration. Assessing biodiversity directly from space is challenging, but Earth Observation (EO) data can provide valuable insights into land use/cover or landscape structure (e.g., the new Copernicus HRL VLCC products), which can serve as proxies for habitat quality and biodiversity. By quantifying farmland habitat quality, conservation efforts can be targeted to protect, restore, and enhance these habitats, maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. Indicator changes can inform farmers and policymakers where to focus on improving or where to maintain habitat quality (e.g. by developing and implementing sustainable agricultural practices). Nevertheless, there is still much to explore on how the available information could be utilized in extracting indicators that can help monitoring farmland biodiversity. Recently, the OECD has proposed a potential workflow for the development of a farmland habitat biodiversity indicator (FHBI) aiming to characterize farmland habitats on a national level based on already available monitoring data. At the workshop we want to discuss; current concepts of monitoring farmland biodiversity based on EO-data. Guiding questions include: how can we develop methods to convert land cover information into habitat quality indicators for biodiversity?, how such indicators can be upscaled and made comparable among different countries?, what are the recent advances in comparing EO-based habitat indicators in agricultural areas with biodiversity data?

Outcome: The workshop's goal is to establish a collaborative team that can take this research forward and explore its applications on broader scales and various contexts based on workshop outcomes.

Organization: We will have an introductory talk, including show cases and an interactive dashboard, and then we will split into break-out groups, where a specific question will be discussed at each table.

The demonstration aims to exhibit the ARIES (Artificial Intelligence for Environment and Sustainability) platform’s transparent, fast, and open-source approach to Environmental Accounting, highlighting how ARIES for SEEA supports these studies in countries with varying data availabilities and capacities. By presenting real-world applications, specifically focusing on a mapping ecosystem type, the workshop will illustrate the platform’s ability to provide state-of-the-art results under time and financial constraints.

Participants will learn how ARIES supports ecosystem condition assessment and ecosystem service flow estimation, ensuring reusability across scales and methodologies, and understand how ARIES technology facilitates scalable and interoperable ecosystem type mapping, adaptable to both data-scarce and data-rich contexts.

The demonstration will start with an overview of ARIES and its impact on advancing ecosystem accounting globally, after which the "ARIES for SEEA" application will be shown, demonstrating how Ecosystem Accounting can be accomplished in a simple and approachable way. It is also accessible to anyone (access is entirely free for non-commercial use, and datasets used are global and open) via a web browser (requires only an internet connection).

Finally, some case studies will be presented, showing practical applications done in the last years, specifically in Senegal, Colombia, and Germany, focusing on their unique challenges and achievements.

UNBL is a free-to-use, open-source online platform that provides access to the best available global spatial data on biodiversity, climate, and sustainable development as well as analytic tools to enable governments and other stakeholders to support action that puts nature at the centre of sustainable development. UNBL combines the latest technology, the best available data, password-protected workspaces to upload user’s own data, and user-friendly analytics to enable users to better map ecosystems and biodiversity, calculate selected indicators, track changes over time and use integrated biodiversity-inclusive spatial planning.

UNBL strives to develop functionality that does not require GIS expertise, is available in English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, and is overseen by a partnership between the CBD Secretariat, the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

In this session, we will provide:

(i) an overview introduction to UNBL;

(ii) a data and functionality demo, and

(iii) ample time for questions, discussion and assisted hands-on experience.

After the session, attendees are expected to be able to:

(i) find relevant data in UNBL and visualize on maps for regions of interest;

(ii) find trends over time using relevant data or UNBL built-in analytics;

(iii) have learnt how to access data that can be used to support national capacity to plan, implement, monitor and report on biodiversity targets and sustainable development goals;

(iv) have learnt how data related to biodiversity, climate and sustainable development can be used to inform decision-making.

Essential Ocean Variables (EOV) and Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) are complementary frameworks that enable standardized metrics to inform policy and planning conservation efforts and make progress towards biological diversity targets. They are fundamental for reporting on national biodiversity priorities and international agreements (i.e. Convention on Biological Diversity Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Sustainable Development Goals, CCAMLR, IPCC, IPBES, Marine Strategy Framework Directive, Maritime Spatial Planning Framework Directive, etc.). The variables are curated by the Global Ocean Observing System - GOOS Biology and Ecosystems panel of experts and the GEO BON’s Marine Biodiversity Observation Network, and popularized by researcher networks including the Marine Life 2030 and OBON, SUPREME, and other Ocean Decade Programmes. Some of the physics, biogeochemistry, and biology and ecosystems EOVs are also as Essential Climate Variables (ECV). An important goal is to improve modelling and forecasting of marine life and ecological scenarios. This is especially challenging but critical for gathering meaningful environmental knowledge and data at temporal and spatial scales of complex biological, biogeochemical and physical processes to inform ecosystem-based approaches to biodiversity conservation and manage for sustainable ocean development. The remote sensing community has initiated an approach to estimate Essential Variables. The aim of the workshop is to help advance consensus among the private, government, and academic communities on the mapping of EOV, EBV and other products based on remote sensing. It seeks to identify limitations of satellite Earth Observation (SEO) for deriving accurate ocean EBV at the required spatial and temporal scales. To do so we aim to focus on these aspects:

1. Prioritize remote sensing observations and products needed for local, national, and international biodiversity monitoring and management in the EBV framework.

2. Highlight scientific, monitoring gaps, and policy options that may be addressed by defining specifications for future satellite remote sensing missions.

3. Identify in situ observations to calibrate, validate, and complement remote sensing data. Methods of interest include the use of eDNA, passive and active acoustics, autonomous systems and approaches, imaging and other optics observing in the context of remote sensing advances for Essential Variables.

4. Advances in modelling that combine remote sensing and in situ biodiversity EOV to generate EBVs, indicators; examples of practical management and other operational applications are especially welcome.

Workshop methodology: The workshop is open to any BIOSPACE paricipant. After introducing the key perspective of the workshop, participants will be guided through group discussion to (1) identify metrics, indicators, and related remote sensing products, and their potential application

for specific monitoring and policy needs, and (2) identify platforms, limitations, and requirements for metrics retrieval

Expected Outcomes: The workshop will elaborate a roadmap of products and services that are available for answering policy needs, define a list of products and indicators that can be produced in the future, and identify limitations and challenges deriving from methodological challenges and data gaps. The workshop will provide a summary of present platforms, limitations, and requirements for metrics retrieval. An output for space agencies will be requirements for future satellite earth observation to address marine biodiversity challenges.

We invite stakeholders from government, private, and academic groups to move these goals forward by actively participating to this workshop.

Restoration of degraded ecosystems and protection of intact ecosystems are crucial actions to mitigate the impacts of global climate change and biodiversity loss. Earth observation (EO) data from satellites can be useful to evaluate the impact of restoration and conservation interventions and enable a wise allocation of resources. Unfortunately, practical knowledge of earth observation data and processing is often lacking among conservation and restoration stakeholders, and user-oriented tools integrating earth observation data processing and impact evaluation are currently missing.

In this demonstration, we present an open software toolset, implemented as an R package, for counterfactual impact evaluation of restoration and conservation actions. This toolset integrates acquisition and processing of open EO and other spatial datasets with the most appropriate impact evaluation designs depending on the users’ specification. The target audience includes NGOs, governments, restoration and conservation managers, funding bodies, and scientists. For all these target groups, this toolset can make standardization choices more transparent and facilitate reproducibility in the reporting of the impact of restoration and conservation actions.

This will be a hands-on demonstration. Participants can follow the demonstration shown by the organizers, but are encouraged to run analysis themselves on their own laptop (ideally with R, Rtools and RStudio installed – see https://cran.r-project.org/ and https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/). Example datasets are provided in the R package for demonstration purposes, and participants will have the opportunity to test the toolset with their own dataset with guidance of the organizers. Participants will learn to use the main functionalities of the toolset and be able to provide feedback for further development of the toolbox.

Natural landscapes (grasslands, meadows, forests) are essential for environmental well-being because of their provision of ecosystem services. These landscapes are under increasing pressure from climate change, resource extraction, and human-induced disturbances. The results are changes in habitats most of the time accompanied with a loss of species diversity. Satellite EO enables global and systematic monitoring of biodiversity dynamics.
The objective of this demonstration is to present the Terrestrial Ecology Data service (TerEcoData) developed by the French Data-Terra/THEIA Research Infrastructure which providing advanced indicators of ecosystem
properties (space-time vegetation changes, plant phenological stages) from high-resolution Sentinel-2 time
series. The on-demand service offers the creation of multiple products according to the user needs and expertise in satellite remote sensing.
The web-service allows selecting the period and region of interest, the indicators to be computed and their
representation (pixel, polygon). It is based on a datacube technology to manage and process massive satellite
datasets and derive zonal statistics and time series, and is optimized for high-performance computing
environments. The products can be visualized on-line and downloaded. Since only the needed information is
extracted, the products are directly usable on a simple desktop computer for further advanced processing. The
functionalities of TerEcoData and examples of products to quantify ecological changes over several mountainous (European Alpine, South French Alps), agricultural (Grand-Est Region, France), tropical forests (Zambia) and coastal environments (South Madagascar) will be presented. The service was developed with the support of the CNES / Space Climate Observatory program.

The service demonstration is composed of three parts:
- 1. A presentation of the main functionalities of the service
- 2. A on-line trial of the service with a specific focus on the on-line visualization of the products
- 3. A discussion with the audience to determine potential improvements (functionalities, data, ergonomy) to
complement the service.

Recent years have seen biological diversity, ecosystems, and their restoration rise to prominence on both global and European agendas. Political frameworks such as the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), adopted in 2022 and the EU Nature Restoration Law, which came into force in 2024, have set clear directions for restoration efforts, shaping priorities and driving coordinated action across stakeholders. Earth Observation (EO) technologies hold significant potential to support these initiatives by providing data-driven insights that guide planning, implementation, and monitoring.

This session aims to bring together data and service providers, end users and stakeholders to foster dialogue on implementing the EU Nature Restoration Law while linking it to the global context of Target 2 in the GBF. By sharing diverse perspectives, the session seeks to promote a coordinated approach that ensures robust, science-based national restoration efforts across the EU.

The workshop will be divided in two parts. The first will provide an overview of the policy context and current status, with a focus on the role of Earth Observation technologies. The challenges of using EO in habitat restoration planning will be explored with peatland mapping as a case study. The connection to biodiversity policy will be illustrated through the Peatland Policy Portal developed as part of the LIFE Multi Peat project. The second part will feature a panel discussion and interactive audience engagement to identify actionable steps and address potential barriers, ensuring that Earth Observation technologies can effectively support biodiversity policy implementation.

The workshop is co-organised by ESA Stakeholder Engagement Facility (ESA SEF project) coordinated by Evenflow, European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC), European Land Conservation Network Eurosite and the European Biodiversity Partnership Biodiversa+.