Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences - Earth Observation Lab

ExGrünBy

Species-rich meadow in Bavaria

 

Grassland ecosystems provide a variety of ecosystem services, such as maintaining biodiversity, preventing soil erosion, or supporting nutrient cycles and water storage. Extensively managed grasslands support plant communities with high species richness and are habitat to unique species compositions, but their occurrence has been declining in the agricultural landscapes of Germany over the past decades. The project ExGrünBy focuses on mapping extensively managed grasslands all over Bavaria in a joint effort with the Bavarian Environment Agency. We leverage all available Landsat and Sentinel-2 data to derive mowing dates and mowing frequency for 2022 from time series of phenological indices. The resulting maps support the coordination of surveying campaigns aimed at identifying extensively managed grasslands that show potential for conservation efforts.

 

Project members

Stefan Ernst

Patrick Hostert

Pauline Hammer