User needs, possibilities and limitations of remote sensing for Natura 2000 monitoring at multiple scales - results from the European MS.MONINA project

The FP7-project ‘Multi-scale Service for Monitoring Natura 2000 Habitats of European Community Interest’ (MS.MONINA) aimed towards a pre-operational service to monitor habitats and their quality. As an initial step, user needs related to this monitoring were thoroughly analysed at a continental, Member State and site level. User needs are extremely diverse, both within and between these levels, and often differ across regions. Many of the needs identified can be detected with remote-sensing techniques, but this is not true of more detailed information (e.g. indicator species and fine-scaled characteristics). Even when habitats and conservation status indicators are successfully derived using remote-sensing techniques in innovative research projects, there is no guarantee that they can be successfully applied under other conditions. When testing algorithms in new situations, some techniques do well, while others fail. This failure can be related to variation in user needs, site characteristics, habitat and species composition, timing and quality of the imagery, training data requirements of the algorithm. Despite the huge potential of remote sensing, the lack of transferability of some remote-sensing methods is undoubtedly a major obstacle for operational systems and needs to be assessed when describing new techniques.