Customizing Trends.Earth for land degradation assessment in the earth critical zone: a FAIR-EASE approach

Land degradation is a critical challenge to sustainable development, impacting ecosystems, economies, and communities globally. As part of the FAIR-EASE Earth Critical Zone (ECZ) pilot, this study develops a tailored Land Degradation Assessment tool based on the Trends.Earth approach. The tool aims to enhance data accessibility, integration, and usability across environmental domains, supporting decision-making and policy frameworks aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Building upon the robust Trends.Earth implementation, we can integrate customized workflows and datasets to reflect regional variability in degradation indicators, including vegetation productivity, soil health, and land cover changes. Our approach prioritizes FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles to ensure broad usability and collaboration across scientific and policy communities.
Preliminary results demonstrate the tool's capacity to enhace the detail of the analysis and to identify degradation hotspots. Furthermore, the integration of open-source geospatial tools and standards supports a scalable framework applicable to diverse environmental contexts.
The tool is designed to be embedded within the LandSupport platform, a geospatial decision support system, further enhancing its accessibility and integration into decision-making processes for land management.
This work contributes to advancing interdomain digital services and illustrates the potential of FAIR principles in addressing complex environmental challenges. We invite feedback from the community to refine, expand and customise the tool's application, fostering collaboration for sustainable land management.