New ways to seeing the Earth from space with the European Sentinel satellites

The European Space Agency has recently develop a set of new Earth Observation satellites called the Sentinels that include a C-band radar (Sentinel-1), a high resolution, multi-spectral optical imaging sensor (Sentinel-2) and a moderate resolution, optical and thermal sensor (Sentinel-3). Research undertaken at the University of Leicester has sought to use the data arising from these satellite to address environmental challenges at the local, regional and global scale. Current projects include:
1. The automated processing of interferometric coherence from repeat-pass Sentinel-1 data to assess fire disturbed biomass in sub-Saharan Africa;
2. The mapping of global vegetation fires from Sentinel-3 data as part of a Copernicus global land service;
3. Drought mapping and yield estimation of crops in China with Sentinel-3;
4. Fusing information from Sentinel-2 with Sentinel-3 data to enhance our field mapping capability;
5. Developing methods to use Sentinel imagery to improve fire risk assessment.
The talk will outline some of the approaches being undertaken by researchers at the University of Leicester and present an overview of the main results.