Contextualization of EO data for a deeper understanding of riverenvironment changes in Southeast Europe

The project Contextualization of EO data for a deeper understanding of river environment changes in Southeast Europe (EO context) was funded by the Government of Slovenia through an ESA (European Space Agency) contract under the EO science for society (Contract Number 4000130071/20/I-DT).

The main activities and progress during the project were as follows: first, we briefly described the data collections that we used in this project.

• The collected data are divided into spatial data from different databases (EO and GIS data), strategy documents and other general in-situ data collected in the selected study areas.
• Second, we described the two main study areas (the Slovenian part of the Mura River and the Albanian part of the Vjosa River) and their divisioninto subsections that were used for the following deeper and more detailed analysis.
• Third, we have assessed the seasonal and annual fluctuations of both rivers, from which we have been able to obtain the most appropriate temporal cross-points. From calculated temporal sections, we have performed annual time series for land use change detection analysis.
• Fourth, we have analysed time series intra-annually using a modified Dynamic Time Warping method to detect the observation points that do not follow seasonal patterns. In parallel, we have performed gravel bars mapping, using the SSMA (spectral signal mixture analysis) approach to achieve subpixel mapping accuracy based on annual changes. Annual gravel bar maps depicting the state during the temporal sections with similar hydrological conditions have been compared to observe changes in sedimentation patterns through the years.

The final section of the report analyses and compares all the results obtained in this project – the data collected during the anthropological fieldwork, the geographic terrain analyses and data, and the remote sensing analysis in the form of mapping the changes. The fieldwork results show that people perceive most of the changes actually happening in their environment and that we detected with the EO data as well, and can understand and explain them in the language of their respective socio-cultural environment. We show all our results in the form of a StoryMap as a method, an interactive website (https://riverchange.zrc-sazu.si/about-the-project/) where we combined narrative text with maps and other embedded content.