Climate and land use changes can have irreversible impacts on the biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems. The consequences of these threats for our ecosystems are partially understood. European satellites give us a wealth of new data that can be used to study the fundamental changes and extreme events taking place on our planet. Evaluating this huge amount of data cannot be accomplished by individual researchers alone. Over the past four years, scientists from seven European countries have worked together intensively to investigate how satellite data can efficiently be evaluated and used for environmental strategies and monitoring.