Observatory joint visit to Living Planet Conference 2022

The Living Planet conference 2022 took place in beautiful green Bonn from 22 to 27 May. Ten employees from the observatory were present, from first-time attendees to veterans. The Living Planet conference has grown in size, with nearly 5,000 participants this year.

From inception to completion, the conference kept environmental awareness at the forefront. The use of paper was minimized, and even the neck cards were made of rapidly decomposing paper, on which there was a recommendation that when you go home, put the paper into the soil, add water, and flowers will grow from its seeds. Also, disposable cups were not used. The design of the exhibition space used a lot of greenery and simple solutions for the creation of seating places. The topics of the presentations were very well distributed. More general topics (e.g. Africa-Europe cooperation projects, Green Deal, the future of remote sensing, women in science, etc.) were placed in an ample exhibition space where participants could move smoothly between different lectures. For more specific topics, quieter places were organized. In addition to the lectures, practical seminars and thematic chat rooms were held.

The topics included several regional initiatives, such as Baltic Sea EO applications, and Black Sea EO applications. Presentations relating to machine learning were very popular. Themes like processes in the ocean, ocean litter, coastal erosion, deforestation, greenhouse gases, etc., are continually in the focus of the remote sensing community. Themes of data collection have become increasingly popular, with a move toward creating more platforms where data can be uploaded and accessed by researchers. Calibration and validation are essential, to preserve the reliability of the data.

The observatory had two oral presentations (Riho Vendt spoke about reference measurements and Liisi Jakobson spoke on remote sensing applications in Estonia). There were also seven poster sessions:

Margit Aun: Cloud cover changes over Baltic Sea area in spring, 1982-2019
Mirjam Uusõue: Effects of weather and river inflow on particle dynamics and properties in the Pärnu Bay, Baltic Sea
Mirjam Uusõue: Retrieving the particle size distribution data from in situ reflectance spectra in two contrasting sites
Kersti Kangro: Cyanobacterial bloom parameters in large eutrophic Lake Peipsi: a view from Sentinel 3
Hans-Hubert Sams: THEIA - Miniaturised Multispectral Imager with On-board Calibration
Krista Alikas: Consistency of six in situ, in vitro and satellite-based methods to derive Chlorophyll a in two optically different lakes
Mihkel Kaha: Monitoring beaver induced flooding disturbances in forest land using Sentinel-2 data