Interdisciplinary Approaches to Assess Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Urban Agriculture

Overview

This project was funded by the Hans Eisenmann-Forum für Agrarwissenschaften (HEF) Seed Fund at TUM and was jointly led by Prof. Monika Egerer (Urban Ecosystems) and Prof. Kang Yu (Precision Agriculture and Remote Sensing). It brought together ecology and remote sensing to develop interdisciplinary methods for assessing plant biodiversity and ecosystem services in urban agricultural settings, particularly urban community gardens.

Objectives

• Assess plant biodiversity in urban community gardens using a combination of proximal sensing and drone-based remote sensing.
• Quantify ecosystem services (e.g., plant diversity, ground cover) across diverse urban garden plots.
• Develop scalable sensing workflows combining field spectroscopy, multispectral UAV imagery, and 3D canopy height models.
• Bridge ecological assessment with remote sensing to enable efficient, repeatable biodiversity monitoring at urban scales.

Methodology

The project combined:

• Proximal hyperspectral sensing for in situ plant trait and spectral diversity measurements

• UAV-based multispectral imaging and 3D canopy height modelling for spatial mapping of plant cover and structure

• Field surveys in urban community gardens in Munich for ground truth collection

• Interdisciplinary collaboration between urban ecology and precision sensing groups at TUM

• Funded by: Hans Eisenmann-Forum für Agrarwissenschaften (HEF) Seed Fund 2021

Duration: 07.2021 – 07.2022

Related Publications

• Afrasiabian et al. (2025). Biodiversity monitoring in urban community gardens using proximal sensing and drone remote sensing. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment. View