Environmental Effects of Conflicts

In conflict-impacted regions, where field data collection is frequently limited by insecurity and inaccessibility, Earth Observation (EO) data becomes a critical tool to monitor both short-term environmental risks and long-term environmental changes. Conflict often generates severe and enduring impacts on ecosystem health, water resource availability, agricultural land, and infrastructure, which can be effectively tracked via satellites in near-real-time, impartially and at scale. A wide variety of satellite sensors are employed, which offer multiple viewpoints to work with depending on situation requirements. Increasingly EO datasets are available openly and freely, contributing to the democratization of information, and many provide long-term data (e.g Landsat) supporting the understanding of key historical trends. Such insights allow detecting conflict-inflicted changes in ecosystem conditions, land use, water bodies and settlements over time, providing data-based evidence to support recovery efforts (e.g reforestation, habitat restoration) and targeting humanitarian action. Additionally, very high-resolution imagery supply in emergency situations from commercial providers is rapidly growing, which allows for near-real-time monitoring with unprecedented detail. Combining EO datasets with ancillary information (e.g. humanitarian data, social media etc) can largely help understand the specific factors of conflict contributing to environmental change.