Richard Lucas

• B.Sc. Biology and Geography Joint Honours (Bristol University); Ph.D. Remote Sensing of Snow and Vegetation (Bristol University)
• Chair at Aberystwyth University

The Phase 1 Survey is the most comprehensive and widely used national level map of semi-natural habitats in Wales. However, the survey was based largely on field survey and was conducted over several decades, before being completed in 1997. Given that resources for a repeat survey were limited, this study has used an object-orientated rule-based cl...

1.The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) L-band Phased Array Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR), launched successfully in January 2006, will provide new data sets for coastal ecosystems mapping and change monitoring at local to global scales.2.To evaluate L-band capability for mangrove applications,...

Within Australia, the discrimination and mapping of forest communities has traditionally been undertaken at the stand scale using stereo aerial photography. Focusing on mixed species forests in central south-east Queensland, this paper outlines an approach for the generation of tree species maps at the tree crown/cluster level using 1 m spatial res...

A time-series of Landsat and SPOT sensor data was used to approximate the age of tropical forests regenerating on abandoned agricultural land north of Manaus, Brazil, and to estimate the period of active land use prior to abandonment. Based on field data, two distinct regeneration pathways, dominated by the pioneer genera Cecropia and Vismia, respe...

The increase in Earth observations from space in recent years supports improved quantification of carbon storage by terrestrial vegetation and fosters studies that relate satellite measurements to biomass retrieval algorithms. However, satellite observations are only indirectly related to the carbon stored by vegetation. While ground surveys provid...

The satellite monitoring of vegetation moisture content (VMC) and soil moisture content (SMC) in Southern European Atlantic mountains remains poorly understood but is a fundamental tool to better manage landscape moisture dynamics under climate change. In the Atlantic humid mountains of Portugal, we investigated an empirical model incorporating sat...

The magnitude of anthropogenic landscape change in tropical montane biodiversity hotspots and its relationship with biodiversity is a global issue that remains ‘locked-in’ in the broad narrative of tropical change in Africa. Over a montane biodiversity hotspot of Madagascar highlands (Ankaratra Massif), we conducted analysis on land cover change wi...

Current mangrove mapping efforts, such as the Global Mangrove Watch (GMW), have focused on providing one-off or annual maps of mangrove forests, while such maps may be most useful for reporting regional, national and sub-national extent of mangrove forests, they may be of more limited use for the day-to-day management of mangroves and for supportin...

Estimating the distribution, extent and change of coastal ecosystems is essential for monitoring global change. However, spatial models developed to estimate the distribution of land cover types require accurate and up-to-date reference data to support model development, model training and data validations. Owing to the labor-intensive tasks requir...

To comprehensively support national and international initiatives for sustainable development, land cover products need to be reliably and routinely generated within operational frameworks. Coupled with consistent semantics and taxonomies, ensuring confidence in mapping land cover for multiple time periods, facilitates informed decision-making at s...

A globally relevant and standardized taxonomy and framework for consistently describing land cover change based on evidence is presented, which makes use of structured land cover taxonomies and is underpinned by the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework. The Global Change Taxonomy currently lists 246 classes based on the notation...

Mangroves are a globally important ecosystem that provides a wide range of ecosystem system services, such as carbon capture and storage, coastal protection and fisheries enhancement. Mangroves have significantly reduced in global extent over the last 50 years, primarily as a result of deforestation caused by the expansion of agriculture and aquacu...

This study presents an updated global mangrove forest baseline for 2010: Global Mangrove Watch (GMW) v2.5. The previous GMW maps (v2.0) of the mangrove extent are currently considered the most comprehensive available global products, however areas were identified as missing or poorly mapped. Therefore, this study has updated the 2010 baseline map t...

The spatial monitoring of plant diversity in the endangered species-rich grasslands of European mountain pastoral systems is an important step for fairer and more efficient Agri-Environmental policy schemes supporting conservation. This study assessed the underlying support for a spatially explicit monitoring of plant species richness at parcel lev...

Accurate spatial information regarding forest types and tree species is immensely important for efficient forest management strategies. In the UK and particularly in Wales, creating a spatial inventory of larch (Larix sps.) plantations that encompasses both the public and private forests has become one of the highest priorities of woodland manageme...

Citation: Monteiro, A.T..; Carvalho-Santos, C.; Lucas, R.; Rocha, J.; Costa, N.; Giamberini, M.; Costa, E.M.d.; Fava, F. Progress in Grassland Cover Conservation in Southern

Earth Observation (EO) has been recognised as a key data source for supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Advances in data availability and analytical capabilities have provided a wide range of users access to global coverage analysis-ready data (ARD). However, ARD does not provide the information required by national...

National-level mapping of crop types is important to monitor food security, understand environmental conditions, inform optimal use of the landscape, and contribute to agricultural policy. Countries or economic regions currently and increasingly use satellite sensor data for classifying crops over large areas. However, most methods have been based...

the full text can be found at: https://lpvs.gsfc.nasa.gov/PDF/CEOS_WGCV_LPV_Biomass_Protocol_2021_V1.0.pdf

Sustainable use of mangroves is becoming essential given the dependence of local populations on the resources they provide and the global need to ensure maintenance and preferably enhancement of carbon stocks and biodiversity. Advanced planning of resources is an essential component, but this can be reinforced using time-series of satellite sensor...

Increasing awareness of the adverse impacts of human-induced environmental change have prompted the need for more sustainable development and proactive planetary restoration. An essential component is to equip stakeholders with timely and reliable data that provide informed understanding of landscape change across varying spatial and temporal scale...

Grassland ecosystems can provide a variety of services for humans, such as carbon storage, food production, crop pollination and pest regulation. However, grasslands are today one of the most endangered ecosystems due to land use change, agricultural intensification, land abandonment as well as climate change. The present study explores the perform...

This study establishes the use of the Earth Observation Data for Ecosystem Monitoring (EODESM) to generate land cover and change classifications based on the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) and environmental variables (EVs) available within, or accessible from, Geoscience Australia’s (G...

Sustainable development is nothing new, but it has proven notoriously difficult to implement in practice. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 goals, 169 targets and 232 associated indicators, was approved at the 2015 UN General Assembly and addresses the economic, social and environmental pillars of development, aspiring to attain...

The achievement of international goals and national commitments related to forest conservation and management, climate change, and sustainable development requires credible, accurate, and reliable monitoring of stocks and changes in forest biomass and carbon. Most prominently, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the United Nations’ Sustainabl...

Several upcoming satellite missions have core science requirements to produce data for accurate forest aboveground biomass mapping. Largely because of these mission datasets, the number of available biomass products is expected to greatly increase over the coming decade. Despite the recognized importance of biomass mapping for a wide range of scien...

The Peneda-Gerês National Park in northeast Portugal has been home to wild ponies for around 2500 years. Today, it also provides a rich habitat for wolves, foxes, wild boars, ibex, and deer. It also hosts otters, fish, frogs, salamanders, 147 different bird species (many migratory) and 15 bat species. Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites...

The present paper applies Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) based on Local Gradient-Modified (LG-Mod) algorithm to retrieve wind directions from Sentinel-1 data in the Camargue and the Wadden Sea protected coastal areas. Wind speeds are estimated through the inversion of the C-band MODel 5.N (CMOD5.N) backscattering model. Both Interferometric Wide Sw...

Mangroves globally provide a diverse array of ecosystem services but these are impacted upon by both natural and anthropogenic drivers of change. In Australia, mangroves are protected by law and hence the natural drivers predominate. To determine annual national level changes in mangroves between 1987 and 2016, their extent (by canopy cover type)an...

Australia has historically used structural descriptors of height and cover to characterize, differentiate, and map the distribution of woody vegetation across the continent but no national satellite-based structural classification has been available. In this study, we present a new 30-m spatial resolution reference map of Australian forest and wood...

This study presents the results of multi-seasonal WorldView-2 (WV-2) satellite images classification for the mapping of Ailanthus altissima (A. altissima), an invasive plant species thriving in a protected grassland area of Southern Italy. The technique used relied on a two-stage hybrid classification process: the first stage applied a knowledge-dr...

This study presents a new global baseline of mangrove extent for 2010 and has been released as the first output of the Global Mangrove Watch (GMW) initiative. This is the first study to apply a globally consistent and automated method for mapping mangroves, identifying a global extent of 137,600 km 2 . The overall accuracy for mangrove extent was 9...

Cyclones are significant drivers of change within mangrove ecosystems with the extent of initial damage determined by storm severity, location and distribution (exposure), and influenced by species composition and structure (e.g., height). The long‐term recovery of mangroves is often dependent upon hydrological regimes, as well as the frequency of...

This study demonstrates a globally applicable method for monitoring mangrove forest extent at high spatial resolution. A 2010 mangrove baseline was classified for 16 study areas using a combination of ALOS PALSAR and Landsat composite imagery within a random forests classifier. A novel map-to-image change method was used to detect annual and decada...

Recent assessments of progress towards global conservation targets have revealed a paucity of indicators suitable for assessing the changing state of ecosystems. Moreover, land managers and planners are often unable to gain timely access to the maps they need to support their routine decision‐making. This deficiency is partly due to a lack of suita...

Mangroves are characteristics of coastlines and occur primarily in the tropics and subtropical but extend to temperate regions. Remote sensing radar and optical and lidar data can be used to provide information on mangrove extent and also biophysical characteristics. Optical data are the most useful for differentiating species type, while radar and...

Seasonally varying inundation extent and duration are key properties of wetlands, but are poorly quantified, particularly in tropical, boreal, and coastal regions. Optical sensors such as Landsat are limited by cloud cover, although sensors such as MODIS, with high repeat frequency, partly compensate for this limitation. Synthetic aperture radar (S...

Environmental monitoring plays a central role in diagnosing climate and management impacts on natural and agricultural systems; enhancing the understanding of hydrological processes; optimizing the allocation and distribution of water resources; and assessing, forecasting, and even preventing natural disasters. Nowadays, most monitoring and data co...

Recent assessments of progress towards global conservation targets have revealed a paucity of indicators suitable for assessing the changing state of ecosystems. Moreover, land managers and planners are often unable to gain timely access to maps they need to support their routine decision-making. This deficiency is partly due to a lack of suitable...

Focusing on open forests and woodlands within the Injune Landscape Collaborative Project research area in central southeast Queensland, Australia, and using dual-pol (HH and HV) ALOS PALSAR repeat-pass InSAR data (temporal baseline of 92 days), this paper explores the detection of forest disturbance from the spaceborne repeat-pass InSAR correlation...

During recent decades, a rapid increase in available data sources has enabled researchers to develop hundreds of new remote sensing applications: data provided by new sensors attached to satellites, aircrafts and drones. However, a major challenge remains unresolved: how to transfer the knowledge of these technological advances to conservation prac...

The current set of global conservation targets requires methods for monitoring the changing status of ecosystems. Protocols for ecosystem risk assessment are uniquely suited to this task, providing objective syntheses of a wide range of data to estimate the likelihood of ecosystem collapse. Satellite remote sensing can deliver ecologically relevant...

For nature conservation, regular provision of consistent, timely and useable classifications of land covers and change is highly beneficial but is rarely achieved. This chapter outlines the concepts behind the Earth Observation Data for Ecosystem Monitoring (EODESM) system, which facilitates the description and classification of any site worldwide...

Rapid changes in the global environment, including those associated with climatic fluctuation, are necessitating new approaches to nature conservation, which are being facilitated and partly driven by the introduction and advancement of earth observation technologies. These include ground, airborne and spaceborne platforms and sensors as well as ad...

Although many books describe recent advances in remote sensing, there is a gap in the market for a book dedicated to the application of remote sensing to aid nature conservation. Our activities in training workshops and seminars with conservation managers and practitioners have clarified their requirements, particularly in relation to the low trans...

Over the past few decades, a diverse range of remote sensing data have been acquired over mangrove areas in different modes and with varying spatial resolutions and temporal frequencies, with these used to advance our understanding of mangrove ecosystems and their response to natural and human-induced change. Detailed information on the floristic c...

Societal, economic and scientific interests in knowing where biodiversity is, how it is faring and what can be done to efficiently mitigate further biodiversity loss and the associated loss of ecosystem services are at an all-time high. So far, however, biodiversity monitoring has primarily focused on structural and compositional features of ecosys...

Protected areas in European mountains are locations with well -known boundaries that receive protection as a result of significant and co-existing natural and socio-cultural values. Despite these boundaries, invasion by non-native tree species is one of the pressures threatening the conservation of those values. Managing the extent of species inva...

For the period 1996-2010, we provide the first indication of the drivers behind mangrove land cover and land use change across the (pan-)tropics using time-series Japanese Earth Resources Satellite (JERS-1) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Advanced Land Observ- ing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array-type L-band SAR (PALSAR) data. Multi-temporal radar...

For the period 1996-2010, we provide the first indication of the drivers behind mangrove land cover and land use change across the (pan-)tropics using time-series Japanese Earth Resources Satellite (JERS-1) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array-type L-band SAR (PALSAR) data. Multi-temporal radar mo...

Secondary forests play an important role in restoring carbon and biodiversity lost previously through deforestation and degradation and yet there is little information available on the extent of different successional stages. Such knowledge is particularly needed in tropical regions where past and current disturbance rates have been high but regene...

The Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) concept proposed by GEO BON, Space Agencies, and the Earth Observation research community at large aims to support efforts for biodiversity monitoring. GOFC-GOLD and GEO BON propose a new sourcebook to promote the best operational monitoring practices for the relevant EBVs based on scientific literature, a...

Invasion by non-native tree species is an environmental and societal challenge requiring predictive tools to assess invasion dynamics. The frequent scale mismatch between such tools and on-ground conservation is currently limiting invasion management. This study aimed to reduce these scale mismatches, assess the success of non-native tree invasion...

Authors In addition to the core editors, a number of international experts in remote sensing, and biodiversity field measurement have contributed to the development of the Sourcebook and are thankfully acknowledged for their support. This Sourcebook is the result of a joint voluntary effort from more than 70 contributing authors from different inst...

The responses of mangroves to climate-related phenomena are difficult to decipher in many areas as human activities also influence changes in their extent and biophysical properties. In Kakadu National Park (KNP) in Australia's Northern Territory, human disturbance of mangroves is minimal and hence observed changes are more likely to indicate a nat...

This paper discusses the application of the Cross-Correlation Analysis (CCA) technique to multi-spatial resolution Earth Observation (EO) data for detecting and quantifying changes in forest ecosystems in two different protected areas, located in Southern Italy and Southern India. The input data for CCA investigation were elaborated from the forest...

A wide range of sensors operate in the spectral region of the electromagnetic spectrum where they provide information that allows characterization, mapping, and monitoring of wetlands. Key among these are the Landsat sensors and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) . The Landsat series of sensors have been the Multispectral Scanner...

Seasonally varying inundation extent and duration are key properties of wetlands, but are poorly quantified, particularly in tropical, boreal, and coastal regions. Optical sensors such as Landsat are limited by cloud cover, although sensors such as MODIS, with high repeat frequency, partly compensate for this limitation. Synthetic aperture radar (S...

The electromagnetic spectrum describes the frequencies of electromagnetic radiation with the spectral, thermal, and microwave regions being of key importance for characterizing, mapping, and monitoring the components of wetlands (Fig. 1). A diverse range of ground, airborne, and spaceborne active and passive sensors are available to provide data in...

Seagrasses occur in shallow coastal waters across the world, and are comprised of single or mixed species meadows that are often interspersed with various other benthic cover types, including macroalgae, mangroves and corals. Seagrass habitats play key trophic and structural roles in maintaining marine ecosystems and associated economic resources (...

At local to global scales, wetlands can be observed, characterized, mapped, and monitored using a diverse range of ground, airborne, and spaceborne sensors operating in different modes and across different spatial and temporal scales. Sensors that are generally more familiar to those involved with wetlands assessment operate in the spectral (reflec...

The characterization, mapping, and monitoring of mangroves based on remote sensing data has proved challenging as the prevalence of cloud cover in many areas they inhabit limits observations by optical sensors, diurnal changes in tidal inundation lead to variability in their appearance, and similarities with other proximal vegetation types often co...

Expansive semiarid wetlands include those within the Okavango Delta in southern Africa, the Nile Basin of northern Africa, and those within Murray Darling Basin in Australia, although smaller wetlands are commonplace. Many of the wetlands in these regions tend to be periodic rather than seasonal and may depend on rainfall or inflow from catchments...

Across much of the temperate zone, bogs, mires, and fens are relatively limited in their extent because of anthropogenic conversion of the habitat itself and/or the surrounding landscape. This is particularly the case in northern Europe where agricultural intensification and urban expansion have reduced the area of wetlands, with many existing as i...

Wetlands worldwide are becoming increasingly degraded, and this has motivated many attempts to manage and restore wetland ecosystems. Restoration actions require a large resource investment, so it is critical to measure the outcomes of these management actions. We evaluated the restoration of floodplain wetland vegetation across a chronosequence of...

Across their range, mangroves are responding to coastal environmental change. However, separating the influence of human activities from natural events and processes (including that associated with climatic fluctuation) is often difficult. In the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia (Leichhardt, Nicholson, Mornington Inlet, and Flinders River ca...

Focusing on a Mediterranean Natura 2000 site in Italy, the effectiveness of the cross correlation analysis (CCA) technique for quantifying change in the area of semi-natural grasslands at different spatial resolutions (grain) was evaluated. In a fine scale analysis (2m), inputs to the CCA were a) a semi-natural grasslands layer extracted from an ex...

Although satellite-based variables have for long been expected to be key components to a unified and global biodiversity monitoring strategy, a definitive and agreed list of these variables still remains elusive. The growth of interest in biodiversity variables observable from space has been partly underpinned by the development of the essential bi...

Implementation of policies to reduce forest loss challenges the Earth observation community to improve forest monitoring. An important avenue for progress is the use of new satellite missions and the combining of optical and synthetic aperture radar sensor data.

We combined two existing datasets of vegetation aboveground biomass (AGB) (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108, 2011, 9899; Nature Climate Change, 2, 2012, 182) into a pan-tropical AGB map at 1-km resolution using an independent reference dataset of field observations and locally calibrated high-reso...

The electromagnetic spectrum describes the frequencies of electromagnetic radiation with the spectral, thermal, and microwave regions being of key importance for characterizing, mapping, and monitoring the components of wetlands. A diverse range of ground, airborne, and spaceborne active and passive sensors are available to provide data in these re...

We combined two existing datasets of vegetation aboveground biomass (AGB) (Saatchi et al., 2011; Baccini et al., 2012) into a pan-tropical AGB map at 1-km resolution using an independent reference dataset of field observations and locally-calibrated high-resolution biomass maps, harmonized and upscaled to 14,477 1-km AGB estimates. Our data fusion...

Mangrove monitoring using ALOS PALSAR data

Japanese L-band SAR observations of Australian forests

Report to JAXA on ALOS-2 contribution to the Global Mangrove Watch

Within the global forest area, a diverse range of forest types exist with each supporting varying amounts of biomass and allocations to different plant components. At country to continental scales, remote sensing techniques have been progressively developed to quantify the above-ground biomass (AGB) of these forests, with these based on optical, ra...

Over the past few decades, many of the world’s mangrove forests have experienced significant change, which can be attributed to human activities and also natural causes. However, a component may also be due to factors that are commonly associated with anthropogenic climate change in- cluding higher air temperatures, variations in rainfall, in- crea...

To identify the extent and true underlying driving forces is essential to understand processes behind biological invasions and generate policy initiatives contrasting invasion threats to biodiversity. Woody invasion by Acacia dealbata is a major process occurring and forecasted in Portuguese mountain landscape (Fernandes et al. 2014). This study tr...

Ecologists and space agencies must forge a global monitoring strategy, say Andrew K. Skidmore, Nathalie Pettorelli and colleagues.