Germany's central environmental authority

At the end of Sep­tem­ber 2025, the Co­perni­cus work­shop “Land im Blick” (Land in View) took place, which I helped or­ganize and pre­pare dur­ing my in­tern­ship. My spe­cific task was to re­search and pro­cess Euro­pean and na­tional data sets on land moni­tor­ing. In addi­tion to Co­perni­cus prod­ucts from the Co­perni­cus Land Moni­toring Ser­vice (CLMS), these also in­clude re­mote sens­ing data from other pro­viders. I checked the acces­sibil­ity of this data and pre­pared it vis­ually. The work­shop pre­sent­ed these prod­ucts, planned fur­ther de­velopments, ac­cess op­tions for the data, and prac­tical appli­cation ex­am­ples, which the partic­ipants will then try out for them­selves.

I was also in­volved in plan­ning the pro­gram for this work­shop. In addi­tion to the Fed­eral Envi­ron­ment Agency, the work­shop is being orga­nized by the Fed­eral Agency for Car­tography and Ge­ode­sy, the na­tional Co­perni­cus coor­dina­tion net­work, and the Euro­pean Envi­ron­ment Agency. The aim of the work­shop is to raise awareness of the prod­ucts and in­crease their use in public au­thori­ties, com­pa­nies, scien­tific insti­tutes, and also among the pub­lic.

In addi­tion to the major pro­ject of pre­paring for the work­shop, there were also regu­lar on­e-day work shad­owing ses­sions in other de­part­ments. Among oth­er things, I was able to gain in­sights into topics such as “green roofs as a means of adapt­ing to cli­mate change,” “sci­ence com­muni­cation on envi­ron­men­tal and nature con­serva­tion in­for­mation,” and “eco­sys­tem pro­tec­tion.” Both the pro­fes­sional ex­changes and in­for­mal con­versa­tions with the peo­ple at the Fed­eral Envi­ron­ment Agency helped me gain a com­pre­hen­sive un­der­stand­ing of the agen­cy and its em­ploy­ees. Link to the pro­gram site of the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram “Global Change Ecol­ogy”.

Text: Mara Popp, Elite Graduate Program “Global Change Ecology”