News
14/06/2009 Progress meeting in Cambridge
The first progress meeting took place on the premises of WCMC in Cambridge. GeoVille presented the work completed so far and proposed to introduce the concept of thematic uncertainty for the comparison of the different global data sets. The proposal was accepted by WCMC as well as ESA as focus for phase 2 of the project.
26/02/2009 Kick-off meeting took place in Cambridge
On 26/02/2009 the official kick-off meeting of the Diversity 2010 project took place at the UNEP-WCMC (the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre) premises in Cambridge/UK. It was attended by staff from the WCMC as one of the end users, ESA as funding agency and GeoVille as prime contractor.
15/12/2008 ESA and GeoVille sign contract change notice
ESA and GeoVille signed a contract change note (CCN) to extend the DIVERSITY project for one particular service. The service on "changes in dry and sub-humid lands" was considered to be very successful by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). One of the objectives of the CBD is to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth". Monitoring the progress towards the 2010 target requires assessing the change in the rate of biodiversity loss. The DIVERSITY project has successfully demonstrated how existing global land cover data can be used to assess changes in the composition of one particular ecosystem - dry and sub-humid lands.
The objective of the DIVERSITY 2010 project is to support the CDB by contributing to the development of CBD headline indicators by assessing changes in the extent of different ecosystems or their connectivity / fragmentation. DIVERSITY 2010 will do so by developing a consistent approach for an assessment of changes in selected ecosystems (forests, croplands, grasslands) based on existing global land cover databases.
