Objectives

PhenoTandem main goal is to harmonize the Remote Sensing approach to vegetation phenology with the traditional Citizen Science phenological observations. The project will work on making Citizen Science and Remote Sensing phenology monitoring interoperable and on improving and encouraging the capture of phenology data through Citizen Science to, finally, achieve an agreement on phenology protocols for both approaches.

Project concept and methodology

The traditional species monitored by citizen science as indicators of phenological events were commonly selected without considering if they were traceable from space. In order to make Remote Sensing work with CS phenological observations, in-situ and remote sensing protocols need to be reconsidered to find a common standard approach and work in tandem, where traditional observers include new species that can also be monitored through RS (e.g. forest and agricultural species or shrublands). Thanks to Sentinel-2 spatial and temporal resolution and the new high level products created by PhenoTandem and others, this reconciliation is possible for the first time. PhenoTandem will define a protocol that consider species and phenophases observable in both approaches and will create a harmonized framework that will be tested in Catalan areas.