COMMON TEST SITES
Environmental monitoring includes different scales from fruit
analysis until earth observation, hence a presupposed definition of scales used
within MONALISA is needed. After evaluating the measurement objective of every
partner it was decided to focus on the following five different scales (for
further details i.e. parameters and institutions, please see the table below):
Definition of scales.
It is a major objective of the MONALISA project to concentrate
research activities of the involved institutions within special focus test
sites (for investigations on fruit-, tree- and plot level). The resulting
synergies of combining different approaches within one specific site can
expected to be exponentially higher than isolated activities on different
sites. However, for satellite-based analysis or validation of up-scaled models
measurements on larger scales are indispensable. Therefore, environmental monitoring
of MONALISA is based on a dual concept, which integrates
·
Intensive measurements
on already (partly) equipped specific "test sites" as well as
·
broader gridded
campaigns on landscape and regional level "test areas" .
The selection of the "test sites" was determined by
already existing measuring infrastructure to save expenses for instrumentation
and to profit from longer data series. Both scales are strongly connected with
each other regarding parameters measured and methods used. This dual concept
will be applied on the main land-use types in South Tyrol, i.e. grassland,
apple orchards and forests.
