Surrey Wildlife Trust's Space4Nature project accepted into international Space Climate Observatory
Space4Nature, an initiative led by the Surrey Wildlife Trust, has become among the first successful UK climate products to be accepted into the international Space Climate Observatory (SCO), according to Space4Climate, which is chaired by the UK Space Agency.
The announcement was made at the first Global Space for Climate Conference (GLOC) in Oslo, Norway.
It means Space4Nature will feature on SCO's interactive website where people search for trustworthy and reliable tools.
Space4Nature sees the University of Surrey and the Surrey Wildlife Trust partnering with Buglife and the Painshill Park Trust to use satellite earth observation imagery and artificial intelligence (AI) to map habitats while volunteers and community groups to carry out detailed checking.
Andrew Jamieson, the project manager for Space4Nature at Surrey Wildlife Trust, said: "Space4Nature is a mission with major ambitions for habitat management and conservation within Surrey and potentially far more widely.
"The data we are collecting will also contribute to our understanding of climate change and its potential effects on landscapes and species.
He added: "Becoming SCO compliant extends the reach of our project and exemplifies our commitment to forming partnerships to address the major issues facing our environment."
A second project to be accepted into the SCO was Strata - an early warning system to identify where climate change could impact areas alrady affected by natural disasters or conflict, led by the University of Edinburgh.
Each applicant had to demonstrate that their product or project meets 11 different criteria as an operational tool for climate decision-makers, fully leveraging the potential of satellite data together with socio-economic data for climate monitoring, mitigation and adaptation at a local scale.
Space4Climate said it will be issuing calls for further products and projects to apply for SCO-compliant labelling in due course.
The interactive map showing SCO operational tools can be found on the SCO website HERE.
