An Operational Service for Monitoring Grassland Dominated Natura2000 Sites with Copernicus Data

Grasslands are highly important ecosystems for biodiversity, carbon sequestration and soil protection. They cover significant parts of the European Union and are one of the largest biomes on Earth. Unfortunately, monitoring the changing status of grasslands, even in protected sites, is challenging due to limited conventional data collection resulting in inefficient management. The European Commission is developing an operational monitoring service for the grassland dominated Natura 2000 sites which exploits Earth observation data from the Copernicus Sentinels. The service will have a web front end to allow a broad range of users and stakeholders to access the results of the service at site, national and European levels.