Motivation
Mountain pastures are part of an ecosystem that hosts a rich plant biodiversity organized in sub-communities which depend on different topoclimatic and pedological conditions. This variability includes different phenological cycles which influence the pasture seasonal exploitability and it is subject to climate change. For this reason, an accurate long-term monitoring of this ecosystem, going beyond the sole ground survey, is of primary importance for forage production planning.
Appraoch
GrassSense is a collaborative project with the Forage Production and Grassland Systems group at Agroscope with the goal of developing a novel analytical framework to study the vegetation variability of maintain pastures. Relying on the joint statistical analysis of ground data and satellite imagery, in this project we develop a novel framework to track with high resolution the life cycle, the spatial extent, and the temporal change of mountain pasture ecosystems. A particular focus is given to explore the capability of spectral indicators in tracking the phenology of single sub-communities using limited ground data and cheap satellite products. The developed analytical tools will be open and available to the academic and applied community with the goal of offering an accessible and effective methodology in both terms of computation and data resources.
EOA project team
Partners
Forage Production and Grassland Systems group at Agroscope