Background
The global population is growing rapidly. Projections indicate a 95% probability that by 2050, Earth’s population will be between nine and 11 billion. The World Bank estimates that we need to produce 50–100% more food than we do today. Along with improved standards of living, this will stimulate increasing demands, which in turn will exert stress on agroecosystems, threatening their inherent productivity and resilience.
The ability of plants to photosynthesize is the core mechanism of food-providing agriculture, and a key component of Earth's climate–carbon system. Through a fleet of Earth observation (EO) satellites, Europe keeps its fingers on the pulse of its agricultural and natural lands.
FLEX (FLuorescence EXplorer)
Among the most innovative vegetation monitoring concepts is the FLEX (FLuorescence EXplorer), which was selected as ESA's 8th Earth Explorer (EE8) and is by design timely and ground-breaking: it is the first mission concept specifically dedicated to monitoring the ‘breathing’ of terrestrial vegetation. Foreseen to be launched in 2025, FLEX will fly in tandem with ESA's Sentinel-3 satellite (S3) and will globally measure the full spectral emission of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) from terrestrial vegetation.
FLEX-S3 tandem mission concept
The FLEX-S3 tandem mission offers immense possibilities to increase knowledge of the basic functioning of the Earth’s vegetation, notably the photosynthetic process of plants resulting in carbon fixation. With this concept, Europe possesses the capacity to secure and strengthen leadership in fundamental and applied SIF research and global vegetation monitoring. The key challenge for the next few years will be to exploit the FLEX tandem mission concept to the fullest once the satellite starts transmitting data.
Inferring essential vegetation products from space
