Near real time detection of seasonal changes of vegetation phenology, small water bodies and fires

The Observatory of Land and Forest change is a component of the geoland project that aims to define products for monitoring in near real time the seasonality of vegetation, small water bodies and burnt surfaces. These products are aimed to be used in an alert and monitoring system which identifies changes in vegetation conditions potentially leading to land cover conversion.
The products concerning the vegetation seasonality indicate the date of occurrence of the start of growing season, its maximum, half-senescence and length of season. The small water body products provide both maps of detected water bodies (including non permanent) and the dates of replenishment and date of end of drainage. This product is especially focused on arid and semi arid regions in Africa. Both vegetation phenology and small water bodies products are provided at 1km resolution (pixel independent), at continental scale, and updated every 10-days.
The fires seasonality products provide the date of the start of season, its maximum and end of season. The information is provided by 1/2 degrees x 1/2 degrees cells at continental scale and updated every 10 days.

The prototypes of automatic production chains were also defined. Some specific algorithms were implemented to satisfy the constraints of the near real time / per pixel analysis production, especially for the real time correction of noise on the vegetation
NDVI time series. All information is derived from EO data. A first set of products have been produced for Africa from Spot/VEGETATION data.
An operational version of the production lines has been developed in the framework of the VGT4Africa project: every 10-days, the updated products will be broadcasted to the Eumetcast receiving station in Africa..

In addition, a dedicated Spatial Data Analysis (SPADA) software was developed to let the user easily combine all the information together and derive his/her own environmental indicators.