Quantifiable impact: monitoring landscape restoration from space. A regreening case study in Tanzania. M. van der Vliet 1* and the Restore-IT Consortium Provisionally Accepted
- 1Earth Observation Lab, Planet Labs PBC, Netherlands
- 2National Centre for Earth Observation, School of Physics and Astronomy, College of Science and Engineering, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
- 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
- 4Justdiggit, Netherlands
- 5Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
- 6Planet Labs Inc, United States
The impact of ecosystem conservation and restoration activities Ecosystem conservation and restoration activities are critical to reduce the vulnerability of biodiversity to climate change. Although these activities need to be evaluated objectively and systematically for effectiveness, they are rarely monitored from a global, multidimensional and multivariable perspective. Here we present an approach to quantify the environmental impact of landscape restoration using long-term and highresolution satellite observations. For two restoration areas in Tanzania, we can likely attribute an increase in the amount of water retained by the soil (~0.01 m³ m ³, ~13% average increase), a soil ⁻ temperature drop (~-0.5 °C) and an increase in surface greenness (~50% average increase) in 3.5 years. These datasets illuminate the impact of restoration initiatives on the landscape and support the reporting of comprehensive metrics to donors and partners. Satellite observations from commercial providers and space agencies are now achieving the frequency, resolution, and accuracy that can allow for the effective evaluation of restoration activities.
Keywords: Ecosystem restoration, impact, Monitoring, Satellite observations, quantification, Regreening, effectiveness
Received: 07 Dec 2023;
Accepted: 02 Apr 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 van der Vliet, Malbeteau, Ghent, Haas, Veal, Zaan, Sinha, Dash, Houborg and de Jeu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mx. Mendy van der Vliet, Planet Labs PBC, Earth Observation Lab, Haarlem, Netherlands