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This is a selection of quotes from end-users of the
DUE/DUP projects.

"We need to sustain an international effort to make sure we can link one satellite dataset to another to build the long-time series that we need to distinguish change from cycles, and GlobColour is definitely a significant step in that perspective."
Dr James Yoder
Chair of the International Ocean-Colour Coordinating Group (IOCCG)
GlobColour, 5 May 2008

"The GlobCover product will be the first freely available product at 300m resolution and is therefore a milestone product which will be fundamental to a broad level stakeholder community."
John Latham
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
GlobCover, 17 March 2008

"The integration of in-situ observations with satellite observations helps us to better understand and forecast specific geological phenomena like volcanoes and seismic sites […] In-situ observations have a local approach while space-based observations have a global approach. With these communities working together, we integrate our approach and enlarge our horizon."
Jacques Varet, Director
Strategic Planning for Geoscience for a sustainable Earth (BRGM)
IGOS-GEOHAZARDS, 12 November 2007

"Data from the 11-year time series of GOME and SCIAMACHY provide valuable information to improve estimates of nitrogen dioxide emissions as well as to identify the source regions and to study the regional ozone chemistry in light of seasonal meteorology."
Dr Sachin Ghude
Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM)
TEMIS, 22 October 2007

"The results of the IWAREMA project can be used to protect Zambia’s ecosystems particularly in the Kafue flats where wildlife, agricultural activities, fisheries and tourism compete for regulated water resources."
Jack Nkhoma
Zambia’s Department of Water Affairs
Iwarema, 3 August 2007

"The ESA Aquifer project has demonstrated to us and the countries several tools that space technology can provide. We are starting the GEO-AQUIFER project because we think this technology can help us to get information quickly on issues that have an exponential evolution."
Youba Sokona, Executive Secretary
Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS)
Aquifer, 8 June 2007

"The SAR Wave Mode product allows us to locate and systematically track swells globally. In the near future we anticipate using SAR wave data to predict their arrival time and intensity."
Dr Bertrand Chapron
IFREMER - The French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea
GlobWave, 30 May 2007

"[GlobCover] will also significantly contribute to the monitoring and assessment of global land cover and as such will support the contribution of FAO to the assessment of land degradation and the monitoring of global forest cover."
Dr. John Latham
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
GlobCover, 11 May 2007

"Clues to climatic changes may already be written on the oceans’ surface. Because we now have detailed data that allow us to look for correlations, we are learning how to read those messages. […] ESA is making a difference to public awareness of climate change by helping us to better understand the sea surface temperature story."
Prof. Ian Robinson
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS)
Medspiration, 11 December 2006

"The value of EO-derived information increases as it is used in integrated water resources management to improve decision making. The transfer of expertise and the building of local capacity is a real achievement."
Akram Mohamed El Ganzori
Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation in Egypt
Tiger Innovator – lake Quality Egypt, 28 November 2006

"Thanks to ESA's support for GlobWetland and its data dissemination, the situation of monitoring single, several or nation-wide wetlands has recently improved rapidly."
Prof Hartmut Graßl, Head
Earth Science Advisory Committee (ESAC)
GLOBWETLAND, 7 November 2006

"The [ATSR World Fire] atlas is an excellent resource that provides a glimpse of the world that was not previously possible, and which is certain to allow ecologists to address both new and old questions regarding the role of fire in structuring the natural world".
Matt Fitzpatrick
University of Tennessee’s Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
ATSR WFA, 24 May 2006

"The training has been really stimulating. I used to perform these
tasks manually, which is tedious and cumbersome. I am now anxious to
get back to the office and use these products to update my past work.
It is marvellous."
Garba Sambo
Hassan, Remote Sensing Officer
Lake Chad Basin
Commission
GLOBWETLAND

"GLOBCARBON is definitely a useful product for the carbon modelling
community. Information about LAI is important because it gives us an
ability to constrain the amount of green biomass available for
photosynthesis and gas exchange through evapo-transpiration. It is a
similar story with vegetation growth cycle – or phenology.
Improved information allows us to improve our knowledge of the length
of time that leaves are out, influencing vegetation's ability to
assimilate carbon from the atmosphere. Burnt area estimates are also
useful because we don't fully understand global fire occurrence
patterns either. We can map active fires from space, but what we are
seeing there is only the part of the Earth that is combusted at that
moment. To get a complete picture we need to record the full area
burnt, which is useful for determining how much biomass has been
removed from the Earth's surface and consequently how much carbon has
been liberated into the atmosphere."
Dr Tristan Quaife
Centre of
Terrestrial Carbon Dynamics (CTCD)
GLOBCARBON

"For us the advantage is that [the KYOTO-INVENTORY] products are
available annually, and this is something that compares very positively
with our current land use surveys. It is very useful to have these
remote sensing data in conjunction with our statistical information, to
interpolate the two and improve our reporting."
José
Romero
Swiss Agency for
the Environment, Forests and Landscapes
KYOTO-INVENTORY

"[The KYOTO-INVENTORY] method has a number of advantages and addresses
a number of our needs, and it does so in a manner which I think will
turn out to be cost effective. Studies in other parts of the world have
shown this is a way to do it especially in cases when you do not have
enough forest monitoring stations on the ground to make sure you have
the appropriate accuracy, or the possibility to revisit the areas as
often as you can with satellites."
Dimitris Lalas
National
Observatory of Athens
KYOTO-INVENTORY

"What satellite multispectral or radar images can do is allow us to map
vegetation species, and see where there are concentrations of invasive
plants to give us problems. Radar also shows up the extent of flooded
areas well, so we can see how water levels are changing. Historical
satellite images are useful to see patterns over time – a lot
can
happen in 30 years, or just a decade. Annual satellite updates will
help us into the future."
Brian Stushnoff,
area manager
Canada's Creston
Valley Wildlife Management Area, RAMSAR site
GLOBWETLAND

"Although sensors detecting water are useful, most wetlands are
associated with vegetation, so characteristic wetland surfaces may be
anything from forested or floating plants to rice paddies or wet
grassland. Building up a catalogue of characteristic signatures for all
latitudes has only just started, so the GLOBWETLAND project, by virtue
of its wide geographical and temporal reach, is a very useful platform."
Doug Taylor
Wetlands
International
GLOBWETLAND

"Direct satellite measurements of carbon dioxide will have as dramatic
an impact as the Hubble Space Telescope within the Earth science field.
It should give us a completely new picture of something more or less
completely unknown, showing us the carbon flux across tropical areas
such as South America and Africa, where we basically have no data
available right now."
Philippe Ciais
Laboratory for
Climate Sciences and the Environment (LSCE)
GLOBCARBON

"Interpolated SST maps are of fundamental importance to improve marine
weather forecasts. They are operationally assimilated into numerical
models and allow a better initialisation of the surface fields. Marine
forecasts are essential for many aspects of risk management related to
human activities in the ocean and along the seashore. This data
promises to improve both oceanic and atmospheric forecasting, as well
as our understanding of oceanic processes themselves."
Rosalira Santoleri
Italian National
Research Council (CNR)
MEDSPIRATION

"[The EPIDEMIO] product will be of great help to our organisation with
the recent outbreak of Marburg virus.”
Johan Lemarchand
World Heath
Organization (WHO)
EPIDEMIO

"Meningitis outbreaks take place after a period without rain, low
humidity and lots of dust in the air. […] Making use of
satellite data enables us to follow week by week the development of the
dust storms and the appearance of conditions favourable for an epidemic
to start."
Isabelle Jeanne
Centre de
Recherche Médicale et Sanitaire (CERMES), Niger
EPIDEMIO

"UNEP anticipates being able to put the GLOBCOVER map to good use
within its programme of assessment and early warning of emerging
environmental issues and threats, particularly those of a
trans-boundary nature. Changes in land cover patterns, effects of
environmental pollution and loss of biodiversity often do not respect
national or other artificial boundaries. An updated view of such
problems - or their effects - from interpreted space imagery should
offer a large boost to UNEP's effort to monitor the health of the
planet and our changing environment."
Ron Witt
UNEP
GLOBCOVER

"The experience of being a SLAM end-user has been very positive. Most
of all because it has been possible to combine the technical and
scientific information with the way we normally work, in support of
decision making. This is not always possible with such highly
innovative projects."
Dr Lorenzo Sulli
Arno National
Basin Authority, Italy
SLAM

"Compared to traditional data sources, SLAM products have the advantage
of uniform coverage of the entire area of the river basin. They also
provide important information on the temporal evolution of slope
movements, which is very difficult to obtain ordinarily”.
Nicola Casagli
GNDCI
SLAM

"The use of space-based mapping technologies allows us to carry out a
more efficient situation analysis of the Chagas disease on a house by
house basis. It will also help us to implement effective control and
monitoring programmes on the ground."
Rémi
CARRIER, logistics director
Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF)
EPIDEMIO

"These are maps we have wanted to create previously, but we simply
haven’t had the tools to create them. Remote sensing is
providing
useful assets for our work."
Dennis Babasa,
ecological monitoring coordinator
Institute of
Tropical Forest Conservation, Uganda
BEGO

"Combined with other flood information sources, satellite data can
definitely be effective.”
Ingrid Boey,
Project Engineer
Flemish Water
Authority (AWZ), Belgium
FAME

"I was negative about the role satellites could play in addressing
epidemics, but now I am positive"
Penelope Vernatsou
Swiss Tropical
Institute in Switzerland
EPIDEMIO

"In Afghanistan, accurate satellite maps of the Almar/Qaysar Districts
showing the terrain and the situation of roads, towns and villages.
These maps helped us choose the best routes for displaced people, to
estimate the amount of time it would take to reach them, and to plan
emergency evacuation routes for our staff."
Koen Van de Cauter
Médecins
Sans Frontières
HUMAN

"We are looking to ESA for the scientific tools for monitoring the
sites and warning national authorities about risks to the sites."
Mario Hernandez
UNESCO
BEGO

"The advantages of remote sensing is that it allows us to monitor
extensive areas and monitor remote regions with difficult access."
Maryke Gray
International
Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCO)
BEGO

"It is very useful because there have been no new maps made of this
area since the 1970s, despite the fact that African cities change so
fast – new suburbs can spring up rapidly as populations move.
Satellite pictures represent the best way of seeing how the city has
evolved."
Rémi
Carrier
MSF Belgium
HUMAN

Satellite data can give us global maps of UV levels, and we can use
them to work out realistic doses, as well as fine-tune the doses
simulated in laboratory tests."
François
Christiaens
L’Oreal
TEMIS

"The success and stability of SCIAMACHY so far is a tribute to the
instrument builders, operators and data retrievers, and an important
step on the way to establishing an operational global observing system
for the Earth's atmosphere."
John Burrows
University of
Bremen - Institute of Environmental Physics
TEMIS

"Considering this frequency of field measurements, our need is to
retrieve information with a higher temporal sampling. Use of satellite
data allows optimal coverage in both space and time – every
35
days in the case of ERS-2 or Envisat, against once or twice a year with
GPS and levelling techniques."
Sven
Borgström
Vesuvius
Observatory
MINERVA

"The real ESA goldmine – where Kyoto-Inventory fits right
into
our current efforts – is the baseline 1990 data it provides,
which is needed to measure subsequent changes in carbon stock."
Jaap Paasman
Netherlands
Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality
KYOTO-INVENTORY

"SCIAMACHY is the first instrument that can actually measure carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere at the precise locations we live at."
Michael Buchwitz
University of
Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics
TEMIS
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