UZH is involved in new ESA mission on biodiversity

(CONNECT) At the end of May, ESA gave the green light for the Hyperspectral Biodiversity Scout (HiBiDiS) mission. The University of Zurich is the academic partner in an international consortium with three other partners from industry and research: the Italian space company Sitael as the main contractor, the Belgian company Amos and the Belgian research institute VITO.

"Thanks to the new Empyreum platform, HiBiDis will generate data that was previously unavailable, opening up new possibilities for monitoring terrestrial ecosystems," Sitael CEO Chiara Pertosa is quoted as saying in the ESA press release. "I would like to thank our partners Amos for the hyperspectral instrument and VITO and the University of Zurich for the data processing and scientific contribution to the mission."

The satellite sensor will record the Earth's surface from three different angles, explains UZH in its report on the mission. This makes it possible for the first time to distinguish between treetops and undergrowth. The aim is to gain a better understanding of biodiversity and the functioning of forest ecosystems. The UZH research team of the Earth System Science Group at the Department of Geography will work on scientific questions based on its many years of experience in remote sensing of biodiversity, simulate the data collected by HiBiDiS and validate it.

"HiBiDiS gives us the opportunity to observe and better understand biodiversity and ecosystem processes below the forest canopy globally and systematically," explains Maria J. Santos, UZH Professor of Earth System Sciences and head of the scientific contribution to the ESA mission. "This allows us to better understand how biodiversity in the undergrowth helps ecosystems to cope with climate change and human intervention." ce/mm