Image Analysis Methods to Monitor Natura 2000 Habitats at Regional Scales - the MS.MONINA State Service Example in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

The Natura 2000 network of protected sites is one of the means to address the issue of biodiversity conservation in Europe. Protected under the habitat directive, EU member states have to undertake surveillance of habitats and species of community interest and report every six years on habitat range and distribution, conservation status and the future prospects of the habitats within and outside of protected sites. Remote sensing techniques have been applied successfully to monitor habitat changes relevant for Natura 2000 monitoring using multi-temporal satellite image data, but many challenges remain especially outside protected sites to assess the development of habitats over time. A flexible information layer concept was developed within the FP7 project MS.MONINA to address the complex task of monitoring natural habitats. In this paper the new approach to classify grassland land cover classes in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, will be presented. Based on ecological parameters experts defined simple description models, which were used by image analysts to extract corresponding image features for four different grassland types. Information layer operators were defined to extract image features for subsequent classifications.