E-SHAPE

H2020: 820852

E-shape incubates Earth Observation services designed with and for users. It empowers Europe in the achievement of the sustainable development goals. This unique initiative joins existing remote sensing resources into services for decision-makers, citizens, industry and research. Its broad scope is based on 27 pilot applications in 7 thematic areas (ecosystem, climate, water, agriculture, health, renewable energy and disaster) to address societal challenges and investigate environmental changes. The user uptake of data from GEO assets (EuroGEO, GEOSS, Copernicus) is improved and directed towards direct application. In our department, we currently undertake investigations on two specific core topics. One is the analysis of drought effects and along going ecological consequences in European forest ecosystems based on remote sensing data. In these habitats, climatic changes result in novel environmental conditions which affect ecological processes as well as land-use and other human activities. The other topic concerns the revision of global terrestrial biome classifications in order to produce an updated concept. For this, existing categorizations are compiled and geo-statistically compared according to their climatic and ecological characteristics.

Summary: e-shape is a European project within the Horizon 2020 (820852) program consolidating Earth Observation data to promote its use towards the achievement of the sustainable development goals. At the Biogeography Department we thematically focus on geospatial analyses of ecosystems, climate, biodiversity and protected areas.