Monitoring Vegetation from Space
The training module aims at giving an overall view on the use of satellite data, particularly that provided by Meteorological satellites, for monitoring vegetation cover and properties.
The distribution of vegetation, its properties and state, is of major importance for a wide range of applications, namely; environmental management, natural Hazards monitoring, agriculture and forestry, climate change studies and numerical weather forecast models.
Changes in the landcover either caused by changes in land use, climate change or natural hazards (like forest fires or droughts, for instance) may have a huge social and economic impact. An example of this was the severe drought that stroke Eastern Africa in 2009, causing crops to shrink and threatening millions of people with starvation.