Soil sealing, caused by urban development, poses serious environmental threats, from flooding to biodiversity loss, to exacerbated urban heat island effects.
Soil sealing maps – at 10m resolution – along the entire Mediterranean coastline, spanning the period 2018-2022, have been generated from Sentinel-2 data within the Ulysses project, a Mediterranean Regional Initiative Land activity.
In the coming months, ESA plans to broaden this mapping efforts beyond coastal regions to cover all involved member states, namely Spain, France, Italy, and Greece.
Read the full story on ESA EO pages.
Featured image: Sentinel -2 image of Barcelona and its corresponding soil sealing map for 2022. Data source: ULYSSES project