- VEGETATION data for monitoring woody vegetation in European landscape frameworks

Context and objectives

This project seeks to assess the possibilities of implementing VEGETATION data in information databases helpful to European policies concerning rural areas, forestry, green space and environment in general. The basic problem is to find out how the coarse resolution VEGETATION data react to target features in a highly fragmented cultural landscape.
The work hypothesis is that the VEGETATION signals, and different indices derived from these, can be modelled as functions of the areal contribution of relatively stable land cover and landscape categories, predictable seasonal variations, residual characteristics that are due to environmental and other anomalies.
Emphasis will be put on the signal contribution of woody vegetation cover. Furthermore, it is important to present the information content of VEGETATION data in terms familiar to the end user community of planners and of production and protection ecologists.