Chapter 29
VEGETATION: AN EARTH OBSERVATION
SYSTEM TO MONITOR THE BIOSPHERE
G. Saint
CNES, Toulouse, France.
1.
INTRODUCTION
The VEGETATION Program is co-funded by the European Commission,
Belgium, France, Italy and Sweden. It will span a period of at least 10 years,
as two instruments are now approved to be flown on the SPOT 4 and SPOT
5 satellites. The first one was launched in March 1998, SPOT 5 being
planned for launch around 2001.
The overall objectives of the VEGETATION system are to provide
accurate measurements of basic characteristics of vegetation canopies on an
operational basis, either for scientific studies involving both regional and
global scales experiments over long time periods (for example development
of models of the biosphere dynamics interacting with climate models), or for
systems designed to monitor important vegetation resources, like crops,
pastures and forests.
The VEGETATION system, consisting of a satellite-borne sensor and of its
associated ground segment, will provide long term basic measurements
appropriate for biosphere studies. Opportunities for scale integration are
provided by the combination with the main SPOT instruments (HRVIR)
which allow high spatial resolution for detailed modeling activities or
multilevel sampling procedures. Availability of data to different types of
users is facilitated through the centralization of reception and archiving
global data sets.
Clearly this system will benefit from detailed studies based on other
systems that are dedicated to specific studies of the characteristics of remote
291
M.M. Verstraete et al. (eds.), Observing Land from Space: Science, Customers and Technology, 291–301.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
VEGETATION: AN EARTH OBSERVATION
SYSTEM TO MONITOR THE BIOSPHERE
G. Saint
CNES, Toulouse, France.
1.
INTRODUCTION
The VEGETATION Program is co-funded by the European Commission,
Belgium, France, Italy and Sweden. It will span a period of at least 10 years,
as two instruments are now approved to be flown on the SPOT 4 and SPOT
5 satellites. The first one was launched in March 1998, SPOT 5 being
planned for launch around 2001.
The overall objectives of the VEGETATION system are to provide
accurate measurements of basic characteristics of vegetation canopies on an
operational basis, either for scientific studies involving both regional and
global scales experiments over long time periods (for example development
of models of the biosphere dynamics interacting with climate models), or for
systems designed to monitor important vegetation resources, like crops,
pastures and forests.
The VEGETATION system, consisting of a satellite-borne sensor and of its
associated ground segment, will provide long term basic measurements
appropriate for biosphere studies. Opportunities for scale integration are
provided by the combination with the main SPOT instruments (HRVIR)
which allow high spatial resolution for detailed modeling activities or
multilevel sampling procedures. Availability of data to different types of
users is facilitated through the centralization of reception and archiving
global data sets.
Clearly this system will benefit from detailed studies based on other
systems that are dedicated to specific studies of the characteristics of remote
291
M.M. Verstraete et al. (eds.), Observing Land from Space: Science, Customers and Technology, 291–301.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.