Scope:

• These activities will foster a collective effort in the EU Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries to assess the status of terrestrial, freshwater, and transitional (land to sea) ecosystems (referred to as ecosystems hereafter) and prioritise conservation and restoration actions of these ecosystems including reduction of GHG missions and increases of carbon removals, with a special focus on the use of the wealth of Earth and Observation data available (remote-sensing, airborne, in-situ data).
• Use long-time series from the enhanced Earth Observation capacity in Europe (e.g. Copernicus) and in International Programmes together with other relevant sources of data to better understand the current and long-term dynamics and functioning of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems in Europe under conditions related to global change
• Extensive use of ground based and/or airborne in-situ observation using, as appropriate, existing networks, novel observing systems, or citizen science, together with satellite data for assessing the impact of the main natural and anthropogenic pressures on the ecological processes of natural ecosystems, and on their dynamics and functioning (i.e., addressing individual and cumulative effects of multiple stressors), including in exploiting available high-resolution remote-sensing data.
• Assess the status and dynamics of these ecosystems, estimate their vulnerability to multiple stressors including anthropogenic and natural pressures, like climate change, and assess the impact of these stressors on the integrity and resilience of ecosystems
• Modelling of the ecological processes of natural ecosystems and of their interaction with the Earth System (i.e. biological, physical, and chemical processes, including primary production).
• Improving modelling of ecological processes and functional biodiversity under land-use and climate change that leads to ecosystem degradation (i.e. degraded, damaged, and destroyed ecosystems)
• Monitoring the status of natural ecosystems and assessment of the changes in relation to the underlying ecological processes.
• Integrate monitoring and modelling products into existing observatories supporting ecosystem management and conservation, to achieve better prioritisation, design and monitoring of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystem conservation and restoration actions”.

Proposals should address the collaboration with ongoing or future ESA projects and should towards this end include sufficient means and resources for effective coordination. The ESA biodiversity cluster focusses on the development, validation, and scientific analysis of novel satellite data products, the characterisation the structure and dynamics of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, the exploitation of the synergistic observation opportunities offered by the existing and coming Earth Observation missions and advancing on the understanding of the response of ecosystems to different stressors using satellite technology.