CryoLand – the GMES Downstream Service Snow and Land Ice

Abstract

Climate change has a strong impact on land ice and snow cover based environments. Rising mean temperatures will lead to retreat of average snow and ice coverage, jeopardizing the supply of fresh water for human consumption, agriculture, and hydropower generation. In addition, changing snow and ice will affect ecosystems and biospheric diversity. Accurate and timely observations of snow and ice are necessary to prepare for these challenges. In order to support the management of snow and ice resources, the project �CryoLand - GMES Service Snow and Land Ice� will develop new services for monitoring snow cover, glacier ice and lake/river ice as a GMES Downstream Service. The CryoLand�s value added chain utilises the GMES Land Monitoring Service as well as Earth observation satellite data from the GMES Space Component directly as an input. CryoLand is a 4 year project which started in 2011, and is supported by the 7 th Framework Programme of EC. One component of the project is dedicated to snow and glacier services in mountain areas. Accurate and up-to-date information on snow and glacier parameters are highly needed for managing water resources for hydro power production, irrigation, flood forecasting and even for drinking water supply. In order to supply these services and provide the products to the users a service infrastructure will be developed based on interoperable and standardised Web services. To achieved this target the CryoLand service architecture to be developed will follow the recommendations provided by GIGAS (GEOSS, INSPIRE and GMES an Action in Support). These recommendations include the standards developed within OGC which provided mechanisms and interfaces such as CSW, WMS, WFS, WCS, and WPS. They allow providing online services which can be consumed by different clients for a direct integration of CryoLand functions and products into GIS, modelling tools and decision support environments. This paper discusses the CryoLand architecture with focus on mountain areas mapping applications and on the technology implemented within the Access and Integration Software System (AISS).