The Annual General Meeting of the ECOPOTENTIAL project has been held in Heraklion, Crete, from 15 to 19 May 2017, hosted by the Institute of Remote Sensing Laboratory of Computational Mathematics, FORTH. According to the local organizer, the Director of Research at FORTH, Dr. Nektarios Chrysoulakis, ECOPOTENTIAL is an important effort for a deeper understanding of the functioning of Ecosystems using appropriate simulation models, which are parameterized with combined use of satellite observations and terrestrial measurements.
During the first three days, the results of the last year have been presented and breakout meetings of the different Work Packages have been organized. Moreover all the partners joined the Annual General Assembly of the project.
The last day the participants took part in an excursion to the Samaria National Forest, which has been designated as an Area of Exceptional Natural Beauty and NATURA 2000 site, while a member of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves of UNESCO. FORTH has included this protected area as a study area of ECOPOTENTIAL project, having excellent cooperation with the Management Body of Samaria National Park, especially for field work required to calibrate satellite observations and evaluation of satellite analysis.
As stated by the Coordinator of the project Dr. Antonello Provenzale by the National Research Council of Italy, the important thing in this work is the development of a new generation of European satellite missions for the development of a single framework for the study and the management of ecosystems, using Remote Sensing.