Group on Earth Observations – GEO Global Forum 2025 & GEO-20 Plenary

Germany continues to support GEO and its objectives with manifold contributions. The German National GEO encourages engagement of German institutions in the GEO Work Programme through national collaboration and information exchange. Germany also strongly supports Copernicus, the European Union’s civil Earth Observation programme, as one of the major contributors, which forms an important pillar of the free and open world of Earth Observation with its Sentinel satellites and services. Germany invests significantly into national use of Copernicus data and services. These activities are guided by a newly developed national User Uptake Strategy of the Federal Government on satellite data for a connected and sustainable society which also makes refence to GEO. The strong involvement of German public institutions and private sector in Copernicus provides diverse opportunities for international cooperation.

In 2024 and 2025, remarkable developments include:

The GEO Land Degradation Neutrality Flagship (GEO-LDN) Secretariat is hosted by Germany through its International Cooperation Agency GIZ. GEO-LDN facilitates access to Earth observation data, empowering countries in their monitoring and planning processes to halt the further loss of healthy soils. As a close partner of the UNCCD, GEO-LDN actively fulfils its mandate from previous Conferences of the Parties (COP). Through its working groups, GEO-LDN delivers customized support for specific use cases in up to 20 countries in the global South affected by land degradation. Current initiatives include the development of higher resolution, multi-decadal satellite data time series for the next SDG Indicator 15.3.1 reporting cycle and contributions to a planned OGC Standard for geospatial reporting indicators, benefiting broader SDG reporting efforts. GEO-LDN will further enhance its efforts to leverage synergies across the three Rio Conventions and foster collaboration and exchange with GEO activities supporting those conventions.

The German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig hosts the GEO BON Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) Data Portal, a core platform of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) to provide open access and standardized sharing of multidimensional biodiversity data. The portal uses structured formats with rich metadata to harmonise diverse geospatial datasets, including information on global ecosystem changes from remote sensing and spatio-temporal species distribution models under future scenarios. As a GEO Flagship, GEO BON enhances high-quality biodiversity data availability, supporting national governments and policy bodies like the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework in meeting reporting and decision-making needs.

The German Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) hosts three globally acting hydrological data centres. Established in 1988, the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) has been serving for more than 35 years successfully as a facilitator between the producers of hydrological data and the international research community. GRDC is part of the WMO Catalogue for Climate Data and provides important data for WMO’s State of Global Water Resources report since 2021. The International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) was established in 2009 at the TU Wien (Vienna). In 2022 the German Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) and the International Centre for Water Resource and Global Change (ICWRGC) have taken over its operations. ISMN is hosting the most comprehensive collection of harmonized and quality controlled in situ soil moisture data. It contributes to several WMO initiatives, like the State of the Global Water Resources Report and Hydro-SOS and serves as a refence data base for the calibration/validation of satellite remote sensing and environmental modeling. The UNEP GEMS/Water Data Centre (GWDC) is actively contributing to the GEO AquaWatch initiative and supporting the standardization and harmonization of water quality data exchange from in-situ and remote sensing observations through OGC and WMO with the ambition to develop Member States’ reporting capacities and integrate their data into the global observing systems of UNEP (GEMS/Water), WMO (WHOS) and GEO (GEOSS).

Germany’s national meteorological service (DWD) also contributes to the systematic monitoring of the global water and energy cycles. Since 1989, DWD operates the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). GPCC is by far the largest collection worldwide of station-based precipitation measurements. The observations are obtained from different sources, primarily from national meteorological services. They are quality-controlled, possibly corrected, archived and used to derive various gridded precipitation products for the Earth's land-surface, as e.g. monthly means. DWD also hosts the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM SAF), a consortium of European partners led by DWD. CM SAF develops, generates, archives and distributes high-quality satellite-derived products of the energy and water cycle, e.g. surface radiation, cloudiness, precipitation. An application example of the surface radiation datasets are solar atlases, and they are a frequently used product in the renewable energy sectors. Products of both data centres are regularly used in international assessments of the state of climate or water resources.

Since its establishment in Bonn, Germany, in 2023, the United Nations Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence (hereinafter UN-GGCE) has already achieved remarkable success: It has comprehensively analysed the status quo, e.g. revealed the risks of a collapse of the geodesy supply chain, raised awareness of the importance of geodesy and connected crucial stakeholders. This fundamental work forms the basis for the future activities of the UN-GGCE. All publications can be accessed through https://ggim.un.org/UNGGCE/. In addition to Germany, several countries such as Norway, Spain, France, Singapore and Japan are already supporting the UN-GGCE by seconded staff. Solid support through secondments or substantial contributions to the geodesy supply chain from partner organisations from other member states is therefore already in place. Nevertheless, the continuous expansion of the availability of resources must remain the long-term goal. With regard to the UN-GGCE's operational work, the Joint Development Plan (JDP) is of particular importance as it will provide the basis for concrete activities to sustainably secure the global geodesy supply chain by agreements. The Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) has confirmed its support and signed a supplement to the current agreement to secure the finances of the UN-GGCE until the end of 2030.

The Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) carries out several development cooperation projects with African, Latin American and Asian partner countries. Many different, mainly freely available satellite data (e.g. Copernicus, Landsat), digital elevation models and geological survey data are used in these projects. Concerning EO data aspects the cooperation with the Geological Survey of Bangladesh (GSB) “Geo-Information for Urban Planning and Adaptation to Climate Change” provided planning agencies in pilot cities with information on land-use, inundation-prone areas, changes in river shifting and ground motion analysis. The regional cooperation with SICA ("Central America Integration System") related to geothermal resource exploration has concluded successfully. Activities included the use of EO information for lineament mapping in the early stage reconnaissance phase of geothermal exploration.

Global urban development and health risks from climate change and air pollution can be assessed using the free and open German Aerospace Center (DLR) services ‘World Settlement Footprint (WSF®)’ and ‘Atmospheric Composition Monitoring’ as provided as part of DLR Earth Observation Center Geoservices. The suite of WSF® products provides dedicated information on the spatiotemporal dynamics (WSF® Evolution) and the area, height and volume of the built-up area (WSF® 2019, WSF® 3D). To develop healthy and climate-resilient cities these satellite-based products need to be combined with Urban Climate Models, like PALM-4U, to assess the urban environment under current and future climate conditions and mobility scenarios. Following a rigorous co-design process, DLR develops user-driven services for assessing multiple urban health risks.

Germany's hyperspectral satellite mission, EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program), monitors the Earth's terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems through the extraction of geochemical, biochemical and biophysical parameters. The mission was successfully launched in 2022. Three years later, the scientific user community has widely adopted EnMAP's excellent data for various applications, while the transition towards commercial services has started. The German Space Agency at DLR, responsible for the mission management, together with the Science PI at the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) and the DLR Ground Segment are working in close collaborating to meet the user requirements. Beside the tasking of the users, a foreground mission was introduced in 2024 to improve the acquisitions strategy, while the background mission uses mission capabilities to cover international Cal/Val targets. Part of the science program are the open science tools EnMAP-Box for visualization and processing of hyperspectral imaging spectroscopy data and the online learning initiative HYPERedu on EO-College. EnMAP data and the open science tools empower the GEO community to apply the use of hyperspectral imaging spectroscopy in tackling local environmental challenges and driving global collaboration. Further information on the mission, including news, data access and publications are available on https://www.enmap.org/.