About
The Sentinel Program is a joint effort between the European Space Agency and the European Commission to replace and/or continue existing older Earth observation missions ensuring there are no data gaps in the global monitoring of the environment and security. It has a series of missions planned, of which the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions were launched in 2014 and 2015 respectively. The Sentinel Program focuses on various applications of land monitoring including land use and land cover change, agriculture, and natural disasters. The satellites in the Sentinel-1 mission acquire data in a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mode while the Sentinel-2 mission satellites acquire data in a Multispectral mode. The Earth observation data in both modes provide different information complementing each other. For instance, because SAR is less sensitive to weather conditions, it substitutes multispectral data in cloud prone areas. Sentinel data are valuable resources for environment monitoring, and have proven applications in hydrology, vegetation, crop, and natural disasters. Data acquired by the Sentinel Program are available free of cost, and have great potential for the monitoring of the environment and disasters in the Hindu Kush Himalaya.
Objectives
This training aims to train relevant professionals from ICIMOD and selected partner institutions and SERVIR-hubs on sentinel satellite data analysis for various applications. In addition, this training will impart knowledge on theories of microwave radar and optical remote sensing data analysis, and provide hands-on practice in sentinel data analysis tools and techniques. The focus will be on soil moisture mapping, crop area mapping and growth monitoring for rice and wheat, monsoon crop mapping, land use and land cover mapping, and vegetation mapping. It is expected that this training will initiate and foster further training whereby workshop participants will take on the role of facilitators to promote institutional capacities in sentinel satellites data analysis.
Expected Participants
ICIMOD professionals from relevant themes, relevant partner agencies in Nepal, SERVIR-Mekong Hub, and SERVIR-Eastern & Southern Africa Hub.
The training will be facilitated by three resource persons from EURAC research, Institute for Applied Remote Sensing, Italy
- Ruth Sonnenschein,
EURAC research, Institute for Applied Remote Sensing
Viale Druso 1, I-39100 Bolzano, Italy,
Email: ruth.sonnenschein@eurac.edu
Expert in forest vegetation dynamics with optical data. Sonnenschein worked extensively in a previous land-cover classification project. - Sarah Asam,
EURAC research, Institute for Applied Remote Sensing
Viale Druso 1, I-39100 Bolzano, Italy,
Email: Sarah.Asam@eurac.edu
Expert in grassland and vegetation dynamics with optical data (different scale from MODIS to Sentinel2, Rapid Eye scale) - Felix Greifeneder,
EURAC research, Institute for Applied Remote Sensing
Viale Druso 1, I-39100 Bolzano, Italy,
Email: Felix.Greifeneder@eurac.edu
Expert in soil moisture monitoring with SAR images.
