GMES SERVICE ELEMENT FOREST MONITORING

The paper will present the modality of user training in GSE-FM. The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) is a joint initiative of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Union (EU). GSE Forest Monitoring (GSE-FM) as one of ten GMES Service Elements (GSE´s) is one part of the ESA Earthwatch Programme and contributes to GMES by delivering policy-relevant, EO based operational information services. Intensive end-user training has become essential in recent years due to the change from traditional monitoring methods towards new and improved technologies, and the use of increasingly complex monitoring instruments. The objectives of training activities are to ensure that GSE-FM services are strongly user-driven and to establish a basis for achieving a high awareness of existing EO-based services. The training will support the development of a user internal infrastructure to exploit available products and services. Discussions concerning the results and costs of these services, together with their implementation, also play an important role within the training sessions. Actual training is based on experiences from stage 1 (2003 to 2005) and the first two phases of stage 2 (2006 to 2008) of GSE-FM. The training strategy is based normally on a regional (national/sub-national/local scale) and direct (service provider/user) approach with some service lines, which are expandable to a global level (Pan-European scale). Training is offered to politicians (more based on promotion activities) and management staff of existing and new users from thematic and/or technical departments. The general objectives of the whole training in the context of GSE-FM, an overview of all planned training activities in the current year, possible content and manner of the training are captured and updated annually in the so-called training plan. Individual training sessions are planned and carried out for their users by the service providers themselves. In some cases, cooperating universities are also involved in the training. As an underlying instrument the lecture, which contains oral presentation, discussion and training material is one of the popular training methods for GSE-FM. Field trips, practical software training and E-Learning modules complete the training offer. A very important part of the training is the Training Review as part of every training session. The review gives the user the opportunity to evaluate the training and the product, but also to mention new requirements for additional products and future training content. Furthermore training provides the opportunity to discuss possible service improvements and enlargements directly with the users. The training identifies new and evolving user needs and builds the capacity of individual users to adopt the appropriate elements of the service portfolio. This will support end-users in their efforts to make better use of EO-based services in order to provide and improve forest information and forest monitoring systems.