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UID:pretalx-global-workshop-2026-GVGR7V@pretalx.earthmonitor.org
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20261007T110000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20261007T113000
DESCRIPTION:Healthy soils are an indispensable natural resource providing m
 any ecosystem services\, such as producing biomass to secure our food supp
 ly\, storing large amounts of carbon – a higher amount with respect to f
 orests worldwide – storing and purifying our drinking water\, and provid
 ing a habitat for a variety of organisms. At the same time\, soils are a l
 imited\, non-renewable and irreplaceable natural resource.\n\nIn this cont
 ext\, the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 outlines the path to healthy soils in 
 Europe by 2050 through\nvoluntary and legislative measures by Member State
 s\, leading to the approval of the Soil Monitoring Law\nin 2025. Member St
 ates are carrying out a variety of activities to activate their existing e
 xpertise in soil\nmonitoring and promote technologies such as optical and 
 SAR remote sensing\, to be used in this frame.\n\nCurrently\, there are se
 veral initiatives and projects that explore the potential of Earth Observa
 tion for soil\nmapping and monitoring for large areas. This will open the 
 path to establish an operational service for soil information that could b
 e available for the public\, such as the ones provided in the frame of Cop
 ernicus Land Monitoring Service. In this talk\, we address the opportuniti
 es and challenges of mapping soils with\noptical Earth Observation includi
 ng spaceborne imaging spectroscopy and try to answer the following\nquesti
 ons: Which technological developments have been achieved in the last decad
 es? What steps are\nnecessary to establish a robust Earth observation-base
 d monitoring system for soils? And especially\, how can the imaging spectr
 oscopy community contribute to this process?\n\nThe talk presents the dema
 nd for soil-related information\, which\, depending on the application\, m
 ust fulfil various spatial and temporal requirements\, as well as a specif
 ic level of detail. One of the major\nchallenges is developing methods and
  techniques that can handle the heterogeneous regional\ncharacteristics of
  the landscape. We present examples of regionalized models for temporal ba
 re soil\ncompositing in Europe to be used as an important input data set (
 Karlshoefer et al.\, 2025) and local\nensemble models for soil organic car
 bon estimation in Germany (Broeg et al.\, 2024). Another challenge\ninvolv
 es the coverage and repetition of imaging spectroscopy data\, as monitorin
 g soil erosion requires\nfrequent updates on vegetation coverage. In such 
 cases\, using multispectral and hyperspectral data in\ncombination with de
 ep learning algorithms to obtain sub-pixel information about vegetation co
 ver (i.e.\,\nfractional vegetation cover) is promising (Schwind et al.\, 2
 024). Finally\, estimating the accuracy and\nuncertainty of information pr
 oducts\, especially those covering large areas remains challenging. Often\
 ,\nvalidation data is scarce and unsuitable for the accuracy assessments o
 f large areas. We discuss various\nstrategies of assessing accuracy\, such
  as producing pixel-wise uncertainty maps (Ochoa et al.\, 2025)\,\nevaluat
 ing the mapping methods itself (Karlshoefer et al.\, 2025) and developing 
 UAV-based strategies\nwith high transferability potential.\n\nThe describe
 d strategies address the typical challenges of processing large areas\, su
 ch as countries or\ncontinents\, which include regional differences and da
 ta scarcity. It is crucial to expand the scientific scope in order to over
 come these challenges and provide frequent\, accurate and reliable soil da
 ta for\nextensive regions.
DTSTAMP:20260624T065924Z
LOCATION:Aula Magna
SUMMARY:Opportunities and challenges of mapping soils with EO for large are
 as - Dr. Uta Heiden
URL:https://pretalx.earthmonitor.org/global-workshop-2026/talk/GVGR7V/
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