The terrestrial land surface uptakes almost a third of our global CO2 emissions, while land cover change, on average, still releases carbon to the atmosphere, mostly through processes of deforestation. Reversing this trend is crucial, while many further push to plant more forests to capture more carbon and mitigate emissions. However, changing the surface has further consequences on the climate beyond those involving carbon. More specifically, land cover change can affect the albedo of the surface, which affects the surface energy balance and thereby changes local temperature. The presence of forests can further generate clouds, which further affects the radiative regime. This talk describes these processes of land cover change and discusses how they can be assessed using satellite remote sensing observations, thanks to some methodological tools involving space-for-time substitution that are being improved and developed within the OEMC project.