From Data to Knowledge using the GEOSS platform to support Sustainable Development Goals

Avoiding, reducing and reversing land degradation and restoring degraded land is an urgent priority to protect the biodiversity and ecosystem services that are vital to life on Earth. The latest Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Landmark Assessment Report highlighted that land degradation through human activities is undermining the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people. Currently, more than 75 % of Earth’s land areas are substantially degraded. If this trend continues, more than 90 % of land areas could become degraded by 2050, potentially exacerbating climate change, biodiversity loss and leading to mass migration, conflict and major food security issues. To halt and reverse the current trends in land degradation, there is an immediate need to enhance national capacities to undertake quantitative assessments and mapping of their degraded lands, as required by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular the SDG indicator 15.3.1 (“proportion of land that is degraded over total land area”). Earth Observations (EO) can play an important role both for generating this indicator as well as complementing or enhancing national official data sources. We will present a workflow using the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) platform to leverage EO resources for informing SDG 15.3.1. This workflow follows the Data-Information-Knowledge pattern using the Trends.Earth model and various data sources (e.g., Google Earth Engine, Swiss Data Cube) to generate the indicator. It implements components for model execution and orchestration (GEOEssential Virtual Laboratory), Knowledge management (GEOEssential Knowledge Base), and visualization (GEOEssential Dashboard).