EARTH OBSERVATION IN SUPPORT OF SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT IN THE FIELD “LAND AND ENVIRONMENT”: SYNTHESIS RESULTS FROM THE ESA-MOST DRAGON COOPERATION PROGRAMME

Abstract. Dragon is a cooperation Programme between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of the P.R. China. The Programme, initiated in 2004, focuses on the exploitation of ESA, Third Party Missions (TPM) and Chinese Earth Observation (EO) data for geo-science and applications development in land, ocean and atmospheric applications. In particular, the Programme brings together joint Sino- European teams to investigate 50 thematic projects. In this paper, the results of the research projects1 in the thematic field “Land and Environment” will be briefly presented, whereas emphasis will be given in the assessment of the usefulness of the results for an integrated assessment of the state of the environment in the respective study areas. Furthermore new knowledge gained in such fields as desertification assessment, drought and epidemics’ monitoring, forest modeling, cropwatch monitoring, climate change vulnerability (including climate change adaptation and mitigation plans), urbanization monitoring and land use/cover change assessment and monitoring, will be presented. Such knowledge will be also linked to the capacities of Earth Observation systems (and of the respective EO data) to support the temporal, spatial and spectral requirements of the research studies. The potential of DRAGON to support such targets as “technology and knowledge transfer at the bilateral level”, “common EO database for exploitation” and “data sharing and open access data policy” will be also presented. Finally special consideration will be given in highlighting the replication potential of the techniques as developed in the course of the projects, as well as on the importance of the scientific results for environmental policy drafting and decision making.