The GMES program provides reliable and up-to-date information on how our planet and its climate are changing to help decision makers, businesses and citizens to define environmental policies and take right actions. The GMES Land Service continuously monitors the status of land territories and generates accurate and cross-border harmonized geo-information at global to local scales. The GMES Land Service has entered in an Initial Operational phase (2011-2013), and its Global Land component is deployed to provide a series of bio-geophysical products describing the status and the evolution of the land surface at global scale.

Built on the achievements of the FP7 Geoland2/project, demonstrator of the GMES land service, this proposal intends:
(i) to perform the timely production, right from the start, the re-processing, and the archival of a number of global bio-geophysical variables derived from low-resolution satellite sensor data;
(ii) to disseminate these products, and the related documentation, using the existing Spatial Data Infrastructure providing a user interface, and an operational data access through ftp and GEONETCast;
(iii) to adapt the existing retrieval methodologies to consider input data from new sensors so that to ensure the continuity of the nominal service over 4 years (2013 – 2016);
(iv) to monitor the service and product quality, including their scientific soundness and the consistency between variables.

In the continuity of the Geoland2 project, the partners of the BioPar Task have formed a consortium to carry out the operational activities of the Global Land GIO, based upon their common experience in the production and the dissemination of the global biophysical products. Thanks to a good spirit of cooperation between operations centers, identified as partners, and research teams, identified as associates, the consortium proposes a series of activities (production, quality monitoring, dissemination, evolution of the service) to supply users with a number of bio-geophysical variables (Surface albedo, LAI, FAPAR, FCover, NDVI, ToC reflectance, VPI, VCI, DMP, Burnt areas, areas of water bodies, LST, soil moisture, active fires) fitting their needs during a period of 4 years.