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Tags: biosphere, science

Living Planet Symposium 2025

June 23 - June 27
Austria Center Vienna, Bruno-Kreisky-Platz 1
Wien, 1220 Austria

Background The Living Planet Symposium 2025 (LPS25) is the latest in ESA’s triennial series of global events on Earth observation. Held every three years, these symposia have grown in both size and scope, focusing on key environmental issues. In response to the intensifying climate crisis, LPS25 will center on the theme of moving “from observation …

Event details
Scientists

Zooming in on drought from space

Summer 2022 in Northern Italy has been extremely dry, as high resolution (1 km) soil moisture maps based on Sentinel-1 show. This is particularly clear when comparing to a “normal” year such as 2020. Read the full story.  

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Phytoplankton and fisheries under regional warming in the global oceans – POSEIDON

Prime company: NATIONAL AND KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSIT (GR)

Living Planet Fellowship research project carried out by John Gittings. POSEIDON aims to understand the response of ocean ecosystems to climate warming and extreme events (e.g., marine heatwaves). Long-term trends (> 23 years) in phytoplankton ecological indicators (biomass, size structure and phenology) will be analysed in different regions, encompassing a range of conditions found in the global …

Project detail

John Gittings

John studied Marine Biology and Oceanography at the University of Plymouth (United Kingdom) (2011 – 2015). During his time in Plymouth, he completed a one-year internship as a research assistant at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, where he developed a keen interest in ocean colour remote sensing and its applications for biological oceanography. Between 2015 and 2021, …

Scientists

Global vegetation productivity and hydrometeorological variables

How does taking into account vertical variability of Soil Moisture impact on predicting vegetation productivity? Does this impact depend on climatic areas and vegetation types? These are the main questions addressed by a recently published paper, outcome of Living Planet Fellow Sophia Walther research. The study demonstrates how, at the global scale, semi-arid areas and …

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Scientists

Sun–induced fluorescence heterogeneity as a measure of functional diversity

High-resolution images collected over a mixed forest ecosystem with the HyPlant sensor, deployed as an airborne demonstrator of the forthcoming ESA-FLEX satellite have been exploited in this study to explore the potential of a novel metric based on far-red sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (F760) to map the functional diversity of terrestrial ecosystems. Plant functional diversity, defined …

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Sophia Walther

“I felt that scientific exchange was fostered both directly through collaboration with external partners on the project and through invitation to and participation in ESA meetings, which I found both very valuable and enjoyable.  I also appreciated any chance to exchange with other fellows on their experiences and professional choices.”   After the end of …

VAD3EMECUM. Vegetation and drought: towards improved data-driven estimated of ecosystem carbon fluxes under moisture stress

Prime company: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR BIOGEOCHEMISTRY (DE)

Living Planet Fellowship research project carried out by Sophia Walther. Variations of water availability drive plant growth and vegetation carbon uptake from the atmosphere. At present, this induces substantial fluctuations in the global carbon balance and in year-to-year accumulation of atmospheric carbon. Under climate change, water stress is likely to be amplified by more frequent …

Project detail

Zina Mitraka

Zina Mitraka is a Research Associate at the Remote Sensing Lab (rslab.gr) of FORTH. She is a mathematician by training (Applied Mathematics Department of the University of Crete, Greece) with further studies in Environmental Engineering (MSc in Environmental Engineering from the Technical University of Crete, Greece) and a PhD on satellite Earth Observation for urban …

Large Scale Exploitation of Satellite Data for the Assessment of Urban Surface Temperatures (EO4UTEMP)

Prime company: FORTH (GR)

Living Planet Fellowship research project carried out by Zina Mitraka. The rate at which global climate change is happening is arguably the most pressing environmental challenge of the century and it affects our cities. Temperature is one of the most important parameters in climate monitoring and Earth Observation (EO) systems and the advances in remote …

Project detail