Remote Sensing For Assessing Environmental Impacts Based On Sustainability Indicators

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Remote Sensing For Assessing Environmental
Impacts Based On Sustainability Indicators

• John C. TrinderSchool of Surveying and SIS
• UNSW
• Sydney, Australia
• 1st Vice President ISPRS

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IMPACT OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

• Humans are modifying the energy and mass
  exchanges that occur between the atmosphere,
  oceans and biota
• The resulting changes may be beyond the
  resilience of the Earths environment to absorb
  them
• Sets of compatible global data are required for
  analysis of key terrestrial variables
• WSSD declaration includes the three pillars of
  Sustainable Development economic, social and
  environmental protection

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SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

• Sustainable Development
• Adoption of practices of environmental use and
  management which provides for a satisfactory
  standard of living today, and which will not
  impair the capacity to provide for future
  generations.
• Development that meets the needs of the present
  without foreclosing the needs or options of
  future generations
• It requires equilibrium between production and
  the consumption of energy
• Achieving a sustainable society cannot be
  divorced from issues of equity, welfare,
  lifestyle and standards of living

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SUSTAINABILITY IN TERMS OF ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

• Need to take into consideration economical,
  ecological and sociological issues
• Ecological economics based on transformation of
  Natural Capital into Man-Made Capital
• Optimal growth occurs when marginal cost of
  natural capital transformation equals marginal
  benefits to mankind
• There is a limit to the extent of natural capital
• When development involves transformation above
  optimum, it is unsustainable

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TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

• Scenarios for developing a sustainable human
  society (Gallopin Raskin 2002)
• market forces
• policy reform
• eco-communalism
• muddling through
• Ecosocial market (Rademaker 2004 )
• consensus, and respect for civil rights and human
  equity
• human behaviour is agreed globally by social
  contract
• Decisions based on inputs from all stakeholders
  (Azapagic 2005)
• Economic, social and ecological issues must be
  considered when developing sustainable society

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Sustainable Development Indicators (SDI)

• developed to monitor progress and assess the
  impact of policies on natural resource
  development
• exact measures of single factors and their
  combination into meaningful parameters
• compresses information on a relatively complex
  process, trend or state into a more readily
  understandable form
• may be application specific
• should be unbiased
• sensitive to changes
• convenient to communicate and collect.
• separate SDIs for economic, social and ecological

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Development of SDIs

• Many examples on SDIs
• OECD - 23 indices based on natural sciences,
  policy performance, accounting framework and
  synoptic indices.
• IISD International Institute for Sustainable
  Development
• UN DSD
• World Bank
• Alliance for a Sustainable Atlanta

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Environmental and Sustainability Indicators for
Canada (NRTEE) (2003)

• National natural and human capital indicators
• Supplementing existing economic indicators will
  provide a more robust picture of the state of the
  national capital
• Air quality
• Fresh water
• Green house gas emissions
• Forest cover
• Wetlands
• Human capital (Education attainment)

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Typical SDIs for Land Practices

• Sustainable land practices
• nutrient balance, yield trend and variability,
  land use diversity and land cover
• amount of tree cover
• impact on soil and/or water
• conservation of native habitats.
• Agriculture
• yield trends, coefficients for limited resources,
  material and energy flows and balances, soil
  health, modelling and bio-indicators

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Analysis and Combination of SDIs

• Multiple SDIs cause difficulties in assessing
  sustainability
• Methods suggested to combine multiple SDIs to
  produce a measure of sustainability
• Rule based system
• Fuzzy logic analysis
• Principal component analysis
• Concept is still being researched is it
  appropriate?

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SDI FRAMEWORKS

• Simple approach to developing SDIs inadequate
• New approach - frameworks for SDIs which include
  linkages between the three areas-
• Typical conceptual frameworks recommended by
  authors
• domain-based, issue-based, goal-based
• Olalla-Tárraga (2006)
• hierarchical concept
• economic, social and ecological each subdivide
  into area, objective, attribute, and
  indicators

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I N D I C A T O R S
Dimension
Objective
Attribute
Area
Environment
Sustainable Development
Social
Economic
Hierarchical framework of indicator system.
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Characteristics of Sustainability Indicators
(Becker 1997)

• Criteria
• Scientific Quality
• Ecosystem relevance
• Data Management
• Sustainability Paradigm

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Scientific Quality
Indicator really measures what it is supposed to detect
Indicator measures significant aspect
Problem specific
Distinguishes between causes and effects
Can be reproduced and repeated over time
Uncorrelated, independent
Unambiguous
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Ecosystem relevance
Changes as the system moves away from equilibrium
Distinguishes agro-systems moving away from sustainability
Identifies key factors leading to unsustainability
Warning of irreversible processes
Proactive in forecasting future trends
Covers full cycles through time
Corresponds to aggregation level
Highlights links to other system levels
Permits trade-off detection and assessment between system components and levels
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Remote Sensing for Sustainable Development

• Identify parameters measurable by remote sensing
  sensors
• Relate them to sustainability indicators
• Typical parameters
• Vegetation stress
• Agricultural
• Yield estimates
• Soil condition and erosion
• Land subsidence due to mining or water withdrawal

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Vegetation stress

• Effects of stress on vegetation caused by
  withdrawal of underground water has been studied
  in Florida
• Vegetation - pond-Cyprus
• Laboratory scans in NIR and mid infrared regions
  of the spectrum of dried milled branch tips
• Chemical changes in the vegetation revealed in
  the data
• An indicator of unsustainable withdrawal of water
  from the aquifers
• Similar studies of stress on vegetation due to
  lack of water have been made on red gum
  plantations in Australia

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Agricultural yield estimates

• Remote sensing data, combined with
  agro-meteorological data, can provide daily,
  weekly and annual information on crop condition
  and status
• This data can also be used to generate yield
  estimates and comparisons of annual production
  trends
• Similar measurements made in Canada

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Soil condition and erosion

• Remote sensing input - direct and indirect
  indicators may be derived through spectral
  characterisation of the soil (if exposed) or of
  vegetation conditions (if covered)
• changes of the soil surface composition over time
  are indicators of land degradation, salinity and
  erosion

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Mapping surface expression of salinity in south
western Australia
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Land subsidence due to mining or water withdrawal

• Differential interferometric SAR (DInSAR) is a
  precise for measuring mine subsidence
• Can detect illegal mines by surface subsidence
• Subsidence of surface due to withdrawal of
  underground water
• Permanent scatterers over built-up areas
  PSInSAR can give very high precisions of ground
  subsidence.

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Typical Plan View of Longwall Panels
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Cross Section of a Typical Longwall Face
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Mine subsidence in 24 Hours ERS Tandem DInSAR

• Master 29 October 1995, ERS-1 Slave 30
  October 1995, ERS-2
• Remarkable result of subsidence in 24 hours

Subsidence
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PSInSAR result of ground subsidence in Perth
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Trend of groundwater level 1995 - 2004
(CSIRO)
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REVIEW - TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

• Scenarios for developing a sustainable human
  society
• Ecosocial market (Rademaker 2004 )
• Decisions based on inputs from all stakeholders
  (Azapagic 2005)
• Economic, social and ecological issues must be
  considered when developing sustainable society
• Remote sensing deals primarily with ecological
  issues
• Linking to economic and social issues is essential

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Linking Remote Sensing to Social Sciences and
Economics

• Remote sensing determines what and where of
  changes
• Social sciences aim to determine why and who
• Economics deals with how and who
• Relating data from social sciences and economics
  to remote sensing presents considerable
  difficulties.
• The reason for suggesting frameworks

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where what
why who
how who
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where what
why who
how who
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Conclusions

• Definitions of sustainable development have been
  given
• Assessment of sustainability should be based on
  appropriate indicators - SDIs
• There is still a lot to be learned about SDIs to
  ensure sustainability of development
• The SDIs must consider relationships within the
  three areas of sustainability economic, social
  and environmental
• Examples demonstrate how remote sensing can
  contribute to developing SDIs
• There is still significant unexplored potential
  for remote sensing to contribute to further the
  development of SDI