Guido Ceccherini

European Commission | ec · Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Land-based mitigation is essential in reducing net carbon emissions. Yet, the attribution of carbon fluxes remains highly uncertain, in particular for the forest-rich region of Eastern Europe (incl. Western Russia). Here we integrate various data sources to show that Eastern Europe accounted for an above-ground biomass carbon sink of~0.41 gigatons...

The increasing availability of remotely sensed data have offered unprecedented possibilities for monitoring and analysis of environmental variables, including boosting recent studies in the field of ecosystem resilience relying on indicators derived from timeseries analysis, such as the temporal autocorrelation of vegetation indices. A forest ecosy...

The ongoing rapid changes in climate pose significant pressures on forests’ health and growth with modalities that are still poorly understood 1–3 . Trees’ structural properties like tree height, leaf and root biomass, result from the interplay between plant physiology and key environmental factors like temperature and water. On the other hand, the...

Land-based mitigation is essential in reducing carbon emissions. Yet, the attribution of land carbon fluxes to their sinks and sources remains highly uncertain, in particular for the forest-rich but data-poor region of Eastern Europe. Here we integrate various data sources (from top-down and bottom-up modelling, earth observation, inventories) to s...

The effectiveness of Protected Areas in conserving forest ecosystems has been examined at the continental scale using area-based habitat parameters, but knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of forest habitats is still lacking. Here, we assess the effectiveness of European Protected Areas in conserving the vertical structure of forests by an...

As the focus of climate policy shifts from pledges to implementation, there is a growing need to track progress on climate change mitigation at the country level, particularly for the land-use sector. Despite new tools and models providing unprecedented monitoring opportunities, striking differences remain in estimations of anthropogenic land-use C...

The European Union (EU) uses biodmass to meet its needs for food and feed, energy, and materials. The demand and supply of biomass have environmental, social, and economic impacts. Understanding biomass supply, demand, costs, and their associated impacts is particularly important for relevant EU policy areas, to facilitate solid and evidence-based...

The study presented here builds on previous synthetic aperture radar (SAR) burnt area estimation models and presents the first U-Net (a convolutional network architecture for fast and precise segmentation of images) combined with ResNet50 (Residual Networks used as a backbone for many computer vision tasks) encoder architecture used with SAR, Digit...

With the focus of climate policy shifting from pledges to implementation, there is an increasing need to track progress on climate change mitigation at country level, especially for the land-use sector. Despite new tools and models offering unprecedented monitoring opportunities, striking differences remain in estimations of anthropogenic land-use...

The timely and accurate monitoring of forest resources is becoming of increasing importance in light of the multi-functionality of these ecosystems and their increasing vulnerability to climate change. Remote sensing observations of tree cover and systematic ground observations from National Forest Inventories (NFIs) represent the two major sources...

Land-based mitigation plays a significant role in reducing carbon emissions and thus in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. However, the attribution of measured carbon fluxes to its sinks and sources and defining the land carbon uptake potential remains highly uncertain. Despite the ever-increasing availability of data, in Europe, there is st...

The terrestrial component of the Earth system has witnessed considerable changes in the past decades due to anthropogenic action. Throughout this period, the NASA Terra mission has been constantly monitoring the surface with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument. When combined with the MODIS instrument on-board of the...

Barataria (LA, USA) is an interdistributary deltaic basin that has experienced extensive marsh loss. The fate of these marshes is strongly controlled by the concentration of total suspended sediments (TSS) in the adjacent open bay water. This parameter, however, is poorly constrained, thus limiting the ability to predict the future marsh evolution....

Mitigation pathways by Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) describe future emissions that keep global warming below specific temperature limits and are compared with countries’ collective greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction pledges. This is needed to assess mitigation progress and inform emission targets under the Paris Agreement. Currently, ho...

A recent study on forest harvest in the EU (Ceccherini et al. 2020) reported a strong increase in clear-cut harvested area in recent years, based on remote sensing information. This triggered a heated debate and many critical comments. Apart from several fair and constructive criticisms, which were welcome, we found that some comments have been eit...

In recent decades, global oil palm production has shown an abrupt increase, with almost 90% produced in Southeast Asia alone. To understand trends in oil palm plantation expansion and for landscape-level planning, accurate maps are needed. Although different oil palm maps have been produced using remote sensing in the past, here we use Sentinel 1 i...

Forest disturbance regimes are expected to intensify as Earth’s climate changes. Quantifying forest vulnerability to disturbances and understanding the underlying mechanisms is crucial to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies. However, observational evidence is largely missing at regional to continental scales. Here, we quantify the vulnerab...

To reach the Paris climate targets, the mitigation capacity needs to be maximized across all components of the Earth system, especially land. Mitigation actions through land management, such as cover crops in agricultural soils, are often evaluated in terms of their carbon sequestration potential, while radiative forcing related to surface albedo c...

Forests provide a series of ecosystem services that are crucial to our society. In the European Union (EU), forests account for approximately 38% of the total land surface1. These forests are important carbon sinks, and their conservation efforts are vital for the EU’s vision of achieving climate neutrality by 20502. However, the increasing demand...

The JRC PESETA IV study shows that ecosystems, people and economies in the EU will face major impacts from climate change if we do not urgently mitigate greenhouse gas emissions or adapt to climate change. The burden of climate change shows a clear north-south divide, with southern regions in Europe much more impacted, through the effects of extrem...

Ponds are common features on salt marshes, yet it is unclear how they affect large-scale marsh evolution. We developed a spatially explicit model that combines cellular automata for pond formation, expansion, and drainage, and partial differential equations for elevation dynamics. We use the mesotidal Barnstable marsh (MA, USA) as a case study, for...

Ponds are common features on salt marshes, yet it is unclear how they affect large-scale marsh evolution. We developed a spatially explicit model that combines cellular automata for pond formation, expansion, and drainage, and partial differential equations for elevation dynamics. We use the mesotidal Barnstable marsh (MA, USA) as a case study, for...

Changes in vegetation structure are expected to influence the redistribution of heat and moisture; however, how variations in the leaf area index (LAI) affect this global energy partitioning is not yet quantified. Here, we estimate that a unit change in LAI leads to 3.66 ± 0.45 and −3.26 ± 0.41 W m−2 in latent (LE) and sensible (H) fluxes, respecti...

In recent decades, global oil palm production has shown an abrupt increase, with almost 90% produced in Southeast Asia alone. Monitoring oil palm is largely based on national surveys and inventories or one-off mapping studies. However, they do not provide detailed spatial extent or timely updates and trends in oil palm expansion or age. Palm oil yi...

In this paper, we review the potential of high resolution optical satellite data to reduce the significant investment in resources required for a national field survey for producing estimates of above ground biomass (AGB). We use 5 m resolution RapidEye optical data to support a country wide biomass inventory with the objective of bringing to the a...

Competition over limited water resources is one of the main concerns for the coming decades. Although water issues alone have not been the sole trigger for warfare in the past, tensions over freshwater management and use represent one of the main concerns in political relations between riparian states and may exacerbate existing tensions, increase...

The purpose of this article is to show the extreme temperature regime of heat waves across Africa over recent years (1981–2015). Heat waves have been quantified using the Heat Wave Magnitude Index daily (HWMId), which merges the duration and the intensity of extreme temperature events into a single numerical index. The HWMId enables a comparison be...

In this study, the recently launched Sentinel-2 (S2) optical satellite and the active radar Sentinel-1 (S1) satellite supported by active fire data from the MODIS sensor were used to detect and monitor forest fires in the Congo Basin. In the context of a very strong El Niño event, an unprecedented outbreak of fires was observed during the first mon...

The purpose of this article is to show the extreme temperature regime of heat waves across Africa over recent years (1981–2015). Heat waves have been quantified using the Heat Wave Magnitude Index daily (HWMId), which merges the duration and the intensity of extreme temperature events into a single numerical index. The HWMId enables a comparison be...

In recent decades there has been an increase in magnitude and occurrence of heat waves and a decrease of cold waves which are possibly related to the anthropogenic influence (Solomon et al., 2007). This study describes the extreme temperature regime of heat waves and cold waves across South America over recent years (1980–2014). Temperature records...

In recent decades there has been an increase in magnitude and occurrence of heat waves and a decrease of cold waves which are possibly related to the anthropogenic influence (Solomon et al., 2007). This study describes the extreme temperature regime of heat waves and cold waves across South America over recent years (1980–2014). Temperature records...

The RAdiative transfer Model Intercomparison (RAMI) activity focuses on the benchmarking of canopy radiative transfer (RT) models. For the current fourth phase of RAMI, six highly realistic virtual plant environments were constructed on the basis of intensive field data collected from (both deciduous and coniferous) forest stands as well as test si...

The RAdiative transfer Model Intercomparison (RAMI) activity focuses on the benchmarking of canopy radiative transfer (RT) models. For the current fourth phase of RAMI, six highly realistic virtual plant environments were constructed on the basis of intensive field data collected from (both deciduous and coniferous) forest stands as well as test si...

Mean Annual Precipitation is one of the most important variables used in water resource management. However, quantifying Mean Annual Precipitation at high spatial resolution, needed for advanced hydrological analysis, is challenging in developing countries which often present a sparse gauge network and a highly variable climate. In this work, we pr...

The forthcoming European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 mission promises to provide high (10 m) resolution optical data at higher temporal frequencies (5 day revisit with two operational satellites) than previously available. CNES, the French national space agency, launched a program in 2013, 'SPOT4 take 5', to simulate such a dataflow using the SPOT HR...

Understanding the environmental and biotic drivers of respiration at the ecosystem level is a prerequisite to further improve scenarios of the global carbon cycle. In this study we investigated the relevance of physiological phenology, defined as seasonal changes in plant physiological properties, for explaining the temporal dynamics of ecosystem r...

Climate change is expected to alter vegetation and carbon cycle processes, with implications for ecosystems. Notably, understanding the sensitivity of vegetation to the anomalies of precipitation and temperature over different land cover classes and the corresponding temporal response is essential for improved climate prediction. In this paper, we...

This paper describes the combination of terrestrial vegetation observations from two sensors, providing a historical dataset used for an in-depth analysis of the corresponding spatio-temporal patterns. The Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) is an important variable suitable for regional to large-scale monitoring of cli...

Climate change is expected to alter vegetation and carbon cycle processes, with implications for ecosystems and feedback to regional and global climate. Hence, understanding the sensitivity of vegetation to anomalies of climate forcing and corresponding temporal reaction is essential for improved climate prediction. In this study, we analyze vegeta...

Long-term measurements of plant phenology have been used to track vegetation responses to climate change but are often limited to particular species and locations and may not represent synoptic patterns. Given the limitations of working directly with in-situ data, many researchers have instead used available satellite remote sensing. Remote sensing...

Issue of interactions between vegetation and hydrological cycle is crucial for both science and assessing impacts of climate change on water resources. In this study we pursue the objective of identifying vegetation response to climate at basin scale for a small tributary of Arno river with an eco-hydrological model that employs a low number of par...

The Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) is an important global variable suitable from regional to large-scale monitoring of climate impacts on the terrestrial biosphere. In this work, we analyze vegetation dynamics over the European domain (25°N-72° N; 32°W-70° W) using FAPAR 10-days composites at ~ 1 km resolution from...