The role of Earth observation in ecosystem accounting: A review of advances, challenges and future directions

The European Space Agency (ESA) project “Pioneering Earth Observation Applications for the Environment – Ecosystem Accounting” (PEOPLE-EA) aimed to study and demonstrate the relevance of Earth Observation (EO) for ecosystem accounting in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Ecosystem accounts are inherently spatial accounts, with the implication that they strongly depend on the availability of spatially explicit datasets. In the project’s framework, an in-depth literature review of 113 scientific papers has shown EO data streams can be integrated to accelerate ecosystem account reporting. However, these workflows need to be further extended to support extent accounting that involves a more disaggregated ecosystem classification compared to land cover types. EO provides wall-to-wall monitoring and hence can contribute to provide reliable and consistent metrics on ecosystem condition, next to ecosystem extent. EO contribution is mainly to delineate and characterize ecosystem extent, structure, function and composition indices, and probably their distance from a reference condition, if not set too far back in time. The use of EO data for ecosystem services is more challenging, despite the well-established conceptual framework. EO data can support and accelerate ecosystem accounting under the standardised SEEA EA framework providing the most cost-effective way to collect large amounts of data in a standardised form with consistency in space and time.