Monitoring the water regime of wetlands from Space helps us protect water ecosystems

Not only is improved access to quality education important for creating progress in the Space sector, but Space can also be used to benefit education, simultaneously improving our own planet. If we are to achieve all the other SDGs, we must invest in young people by investing in our education systems and space-based technologies to provide that education. We should be working to foster the skills needed to achieve these other SDGs. The next generation is the future, and we have a responsibility to ensure that every child, regardless of their background or where they are born, has the chance to contribute to that future, is not limited and has the tools available.

The main challenges to the deployment of offshore windfarms are the lack of suitable and quality data to estimate offshore wind resources, investment costs – mainly installation, operation and maintenance, and sea conditions. The Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-3 satellites can monitor the state of the sea with good spatial and temporal resolution and provide ocean wave spectra and ocean surface winds.

Our Earth is unique and fragile, and we have a moral imperative to protect it. Your actions determine what happens next, and now is your time to be the change you want to see.

Many of our projects have dealt with schools, universities, members of the public, and families. A common thread has been to use astronomy as a gateway to give the public a greater understanding of science and technology. Another aspect of our work has been on the development of skills to use astronomy to stimulate skillsets. If everyone has access to skills then they will have access to more opportunities. Astronomy has driven the continent’s scientific renaissance.

From Space, we measure the pulse of our planet and collect essential climate data: the rise in sea level, sea surface temperature, concentrations of greenhouse gases, and rates of deforestation. Without satellites, scientists would not be able to make predictions about climate change.  

The International Charter: Space and Major Disasters is available for all countries worldwide. Through such universal access, any country with a national civil protection agency, which has the capacity to work in English, receive digital files and work remotely, can access the charter like Haiti did two years ago.

For glaciologists working in polar regions, data transmission is a real problem. There are no telephone networks, or wifi and electricity. Thanks to Astrocast, a constellation of satellites launched in partnership with the ESA, we receive essential scientific information that reveals glacial melting on a daily basis.

For 13 months, I lived on the Concordia science station as a doctor-researcher for ESA. Living In the Antarctic is a unique experience: you have to survive on limited resources for long periods of time; even though you are surrounded by Ice, water is still a precious resource and 80% of it is recycled. The Antarctic station is an experimental site for space exploration, where we learn to live in a responsible way and to protect the planet Earth.

In order to mitigate the climate change impacts, our project for a European Coastal Flood Awareness System (ECFAS) uses the Sentinel satellites of the European Union’s Copernicus programme, as well as images offered by ESA through the third-party missions’ programme. The high revisit frequency and high spatial resolution of the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites are used to monitor coastal areas affected by coastal floods, the changes in land use, land cover and the position of the shoreline.

Mapping the water regime of wetlands is a very challenging task. Some wetlands are always flooded whereas others are only seasonally or rarely flooded. These changes make wetlands very dynamic ecosystems. As Low Earth Orbit satellites acquire images every few days, they can be used to monitor this dynamic behaviour.