Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MySustainableForest (Operational sustainable forestry with satellite-based remote sensing)
Teaser
Forests cover over 215 million ha. in Europe; 49% are public while 51% are privately owned by 7.8 million proprietors. 87% of forest areas follow a semi-natural exploitation pattern while 9% are plantations. 3 million employees work in the forestry sector, generating a market...
Summary
Forests cover over 215 million ha. in Europe; 49% are public while 51% are privately owned by 7.8 million proprietors. 87% of forest areas follow a semi-natural exploitation pattern while 9% are plantations. 3 million employees work in the forestry sector, generating a market value of round wood of more than 18.000 mill €, which implies a 0.9% sector contribution to the GDP. These facts show the complex reality of the wood and forest sector.
MySustainableForest (Nov 2017-Oct2020) seeks the provision of geo-information services for integrated forest management through a web service platform, at pre-commercial stage. Services address issues beyond wood production and industrial transformation which are part of demonstration cases in Portugal, Spain, France, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
What are project goals? MSF seeks integrating remote sensing data across the silvicultural chain into the wood-industry realm
What will the project produce? 6 geoinformation services with 25 products, delivered through a web platform
1.Forest Site Characterization
2.Wood Characterization
3.Biomass and CO2 stocking
4.Forest Condition
5.Ecosystem vulnerabilities
6.Forestry accounting
Who provides the services?: GMV, Föra, MADERA+ & EFI
Who tests services quality? Stakeholders representing owners, industries, research or administrations: RAIZ, CNPF, CFRI, FORESNA, UFE and FOAL
What are the innovative aspects of the services? the technological implementation of the operational service and the scientific quality of the products which will in turn make wood production and transformation more competitive.
Work performed
The work at M18 covers two development periods.
Early Service Readiness and Service Preparation period (M13).
User requirements gathering ( achieved a data base of 508 entries. The compilation showed six groups of needs with no prioritisation yet:
1. Forest site characterisation (32%) requesting technical aid in the definition of forest physical characteristics for sustainable forest management.
2. Biomass & CO2 stocking (25%) for inventory purposes, biomass, wood stocks and insurance values.
3. Ecosystem vulnerabilities (12%) to monitor forest afflictions.
4. Harmonisation EO services (11%) to improve the economic performance of the wood cycle.
5. Socio-economic functions (8%): Assessment of forestry resources.
6. Wood characterization needs (2%) for a standardisation of wood properties per species.
The portfolio of services and products was achieved. These were reviewed in order to develop, test and refine the most promising ones in terms of high accuracy, good validation results, data availability and market demand.
The service platform architecture and testing of the prototype, aligned with the Copernicus DIAS architecture was accomplished. The platform is the on-line tool for users to request products, share in-situ data, point the area of interest, process bulky data and download final service products. Service users can request on-line customised products, upload their own data, visualise in a GIS viewer the final products and download them. The platform is hosted on a hybrid public/private cloud infrastructure for enhanced secured data protection. The platform leverages petabytes of data through the DIAS.
The production issued 25 products based on Sentinel 1-2 data and 5 products based on LiDAR for Portugal, Navarra and Croatia. The validation was carried out by the stakeholders over a standard template valuing technical accuracy and usability of the product. All comments were implemented during the second production period.
Progress and results were shared at the stakeholders meetings: Brussels (February 2018), Pamplona (April 2018), Ourense (July 2018), Zagreb (November 2018).
Enhanced Service Readiness for Service demonstration &Training period (M22)
This period shall conclude at M22; results show a relevant evolution at M18.
Production: service 1 issued Sentinel (73), VHR (3) and LiDAR (20) products for forest mask, main forest types, forest age, burnt scars, clear cuts, DEM Elevation, Aspect, Slope. Accuracies notably increased in production loop 2; the forest age product preforms poorly and is to be set aside.
Service 2 issued 6 products on wood density ranking for Eucalyptus globulus in Galicia and Portugal and Quercus robur. A new model for wood density prediction was obtained and validated, correlating field wood density values, multi temporal satellite series of Sentinel and Landsat missions, climatological data and LiDAR.
Service 3 issued 1 AGB product for continental oak forest in Croatia. SAR L band –ALOS PALSAR data was not available, so Sentinel-1A/1B were used as proxy data for designing and automatizing the processing chain. Product must use SAR L band data; the test proved: (1) Water cloud model and a wide multi temporal Sentinel 1 series are able to measure dry matter biomass at stand level (stem volume not higher than 100 m3/ha); (2) To increase the backscattering saturation threshold, band L is a must.
Production relative to Services 4 and 5 shall be tackled between M18 and M22.
Training activities: the on-line training lessons (6) are planned. Lesson 1 training materials are already accomplished and will be shown and tested during M20 to the Czech Republic stakeholders.
The portfolio has evolved between M18 and M22. A refined portfolio of 15 products shall be discussed by Partners at the end of production loop 2 (M22).
The business model definition has begun. Producing partners work on the calculation of products costs on the basis of: data source cost, data volume processed, aoi/
Final results
Project progress beyond the state of the art (SOA) is linked to the provision of EO downstream services as a suite of products, flexible as adapted to End-Users needs and singularities and with the right spatial and temporal resolution according to End-Users business in the different phases of the forestry lifecycle.
Stand characterization, forest inventory and monitoring at forestry owner level of interest will be achieved by the designed product with the right combination of different data sources (in-situ, meteo, remote sensing, particularly Sentinel data, etc.) at the right spatial and temporal resolution and with the most advanced algorithm for each End-User need.
Six áreas of innovation have been identified:
1. Stand Characterization and Inventory
2. Forest Species monitoring
3. Forest Disturbances
4. Forest Stress Condition Monitoring
5. Forest Sustainability
6.- Non-Invasive Sonic Wood quality characterisation techniques
Website & more info
More info: https://mysustainableforest.com/.