During the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, 8–13 April 2018, a session was organized entitled “AS5.1- Earth surveillance and space-based monitoring of the environment: Integrated approaches”. The Session, which was initiated within the framework of the activities of the EXCELSIOR project, was held under the Atmospheric Sciences Division and hosted a total of 33 papers. Six papers were presented in the Oral Session and the remaining ones were displayed in the Poster Session; both the Oral and Poster Sessions, took place on Friday 13 April 2018. Session AS5.1 was convened by Dr. Silas Michaelides and co-convened by the partners of the EXCELSIOR project, Prof. Diofantos Hadjimitsis from the Cyprus University of Technology, Dr. Gunter Schreier from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Dr. Harris Kontoes from the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) and Dr. Albert Ansmann from the German Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS). Several papers from the EXCELSIOR community were presented during this session, covering a wide spectrum of research activities, such as, bathymetry mapping with remote sensing, marine spatial planning, detection of fronts using the Sea Surface Temperature product of the Sentinel-3 SLSTR instrument, integrated use of space technologies, UAVs and field measurements for cultural heritage, development and assessment of atmospheric correction algorithms for SENTINEL-2, remote-sensing-based methodologies for aerosol-cloud studies and cultural landscape risk identification. Both the Oral and Poster Sessions were considered very successful; the Oral Session was attended by more than 40 scientists from various related disciplines and the Poster Session attracted several attendees.
On behalf of the European Geosciences Union, Copernicus Publications will publish a Special Issue of the Journal Advances in Geosciences, under the same title as the AS5.1 Session. This Special Issue will host selected papers from this Session.
