ESA’s Living Planet Symposium (LPS), held every three years, is the largest Earth observation conference in the world. Last week, the event drew record-breaking numbers of remote sensing experts and data users from around the world to convene in the German city of Bonn, to share their latest findings on how Earth observation satellites help mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. EJR-Quartz editors for ESA were present in full strength, contributing to the large ESA team who made the live symposium possible. The ESA Web TV production team made sure the main sessions of LPS were live-streamed and recorded as many interviews with key players as possible. The team shot about ten interviews in two days – the highlight being chatting to an astronaut!
With over 240 scientific sessions and over 1370 oral presentations, as well as over 80 agora sessions in the dramatic exhibition hall centred around an enormous replica of Earth, EJR-Quartz social media editors were working at full speed all week to keep the community connected to the pulse of LPS.
With the overarching theme of, “Taking the pulse of our planet from space” the event highlighted how the systematic use of Earth observation data can realise many benefits as we work to combat the climate crisis. EJR-Quartz editors published a wealth of stories on topics emerging from LPS, such as what satellites can reveal about climate tipping points, the ambitions of ESA’s FutureEO programme and the quantum revolution in the way measurements are made from space.
On ESA’s technical portals, Sentinel Online and Earth Online, our editors published news stories on the Copernicus Sentinel satellites and the latest updates from ESA’s many families of Earth observation satellites. A highlight was when Declan Perry and Susan Kelly hosted two drop-in sessions to introduce ESA’s Sentiboard, the new online forum that fosters collaboration among Sentinel data users, enabling quick and easy sharing of updates on Earth observation science and applications.