A web platform for landuse, climate, demography, hydrology and beach erosion in the Black Sea catchment

Abstract

The Black Sea catchment (BSC) is facing important demographic, climatic and landuse changes that may increase pollution, vulnerability and scarcity of water resources, as well as beach erosion through sea level rise. Limited access to reliable time-series monitoring data from environmental, statistical, and socio-economical sources is a major barrier to policy development and decision-making. To address these issues, a web-based platform was developed to enable discovery and access to key environmental information for the region. This platform covers: landuse, climate, and demographic scenarios; hydrology and related water vulnerability and scarcity; as well as beach erosion. Each data set has been obtained with state-of-the-art modelling tools from available monitoring data using appropriate validation methods. These analyses were conducted using global and regional data sets. The data sets are intended for national to regional assessments, for instance for prioritizing environmental protection projects and investments. Together they form a unique set of information, which lay out future plausible change scenarios for the BSC, both for scientific and policy purposes.

National Open Data Cubes and Their Contribution to Country-Level Development Policies and Practices

“…Monitoring snow cover and its variability is an indicator of climate change and identification of snowmelt processes is essential for effective water-resource management. Indeed, it is expected that by 2085, the proportion of snow contributing to water bodies will decrease by 25%, strongly affecting the water regime of major European rivers like the Rhône, Rhine, and Danube [36][37][38].…”

GEOEssential – mainstreaming workflows from data sources to environment policy indicators with essential variables

“…Indeed, GEOEssential implements complete DATA > EVs > INDICATORS > POLICY workflows through the GEO infrastructure. Once established, this procedure will be ready to be replicated for any science-policy interface such as international, European and national policies by lifting the barriers from data to knowledge to address the sustainability challenge of maintaining or improving quality of life while staying within the planetary boundaries (Lehmann et al 2017a;Lehmann et al 2017b).…”

“…Integrated environmental policies (e.g. SDG) should be linked conceptually, operationally and institutionally to the present efforts to better fill the existing gaps between science and policy (Lehmann et al 2017b;Lehmann et al 2014;Lehmann et al 2015), and avoid unneeded confusion and redundancy.…”

Complex method for land degradation estimation

“…Methods and their automated processing for solving a wide range of problems began to develop rapidly since the appearance of publicly available satellite data [1,2]. The main goal of research and the scientific task in publications [3,4] is the land degradation assessment and the achievement of a zero level of land degradation [5].…”