Multi-scale Service for Monitoring NATURA 2000 Habitats of European Community Interest

MS.MONINA follows a pan-European, multi-scale approach that on the one hand reflects the specifics and the variety of habitats in the different biogeographical regions, and on the other hand guides the specifications of the service chains as and their implementations as service cases and pilots. The multi-scale (MS) concept reflects the fact on different (administrative) levels there are specific requirements for sensitive sites-related reporting, monitoring, management etc. NATURA 2000, an endeavour in the spirit of the Convention of Biological Diversity (Rio, 1992), is one of the success stories among pan-European initiatives and one of the world‘s most effective legal instruments concerning biodiversity and nature conservation. The EU Habitats Directive (council directive 92/43/ECC) requires a standardised monitoring of the habitat types and a reporting every six years. For this reason, an operational, objective, economically priced and as far as possible automated application is required. The rapidly developing remote sensing sensor technique and also new image processing methods offer new possibilities to apply remote sensing data for NATURA 2000 monitoring.