The Remote Sensing and Geoinformation research group and its project partners recently published the validation results of the national forest damage monitoring system FNEWs in the scientific journal "Forestry". The publication „Detailed validation of large-scale Sentinel-2-based forest disturbance maps across Germany“ presents the high accuracy of the methodology we developed for recognising forest damage from satellite image time series.
As part of the FNEWs project (2020-2023), JOANNEUM RESEARCH developed a national remote sensing-based detection system for forest damage in Germany and trained, tested and validated it in four German federal states. It enables the automated and nationwide standardised detection of forest damage and utilisation areas. Our team of remote sensing experts also investigated the separability of different causes of damage (e.g. storm damage, beetle infestation, gypsy moth, drought stress) and provided conceptual support to the project partners from the federal states in the collection of training data and statistical evaluation in the course of validation.
Since spring 2024, the monitoring system developed by JOANNEUM RESEARCH has been rolled out operationally by the Thünen Institute of Forest Ecosystems (TIWO)for the entire federal territory. To this end, a licence agreement for the FNEWs software developed was concluded between TI-WO and JOANNEUM RESEARCH. The software training of three TI-WO employees was successfully completed in Graz in June 2024.
We are looking forward to the first nationwide products and are working on new research projects to improve and further develop our software. In the Horizon Europe project "EvoLand", for example, we are investigating methods for near real-time mapping of forest changes in various forest ecosystems in Europe and developing improved products for forest biomass. In total, 11 prototypes for new Copernicus Land Monitoring Services are being developed in the EvoLand project. JOANNEUM RESEARCH experts are developing the innovative methods for the three prototypes in the forestry area.
