PILOT : MONITORING OF FOREST HEALTH

Spain has to face alarming situations due to several pests which are big threats affecting the health of very important species in the Iberian Peninsula, among others: Quercus ilex, Quercus suber and Eucaliptus sp. Spanish Public Bodies and forest owners need updated information about the health status of forests to be able to perform sustainable forest management. The optimal combination of different EO data, together with field data, will provide new products for monitoring, and effective tools for decision-making, with a good balance between success and cost of detection. Tools need to be very adapted to user requirements and needs. All this will result in improved forest management.

In the DataBio project, Big Data partners will integrate their existing market-ready or almost market-ready technologies to the forest databases and new datasets obtained by processing state of the art Remote Sensing products. The resulted solutions will be piloted with the forestry sector partners, with associated partners and other stakeholders. Final users affected (policy makers, public administration, forest owners) will be involved in the pilot.

The main motivation for this pilot is:

• To set up an optimised EO-based system for monitoring the health of Quercus ilex and suber forest areas (mapping + assessment tools), so authorities and forest owners will be able to optimise forest management resources and decision making.
• To develop an efficient mapping + assessment tool for monitoring the damages caused by Gonipterus in eucalyptus plantations, as well as for damage assessment, in order to adapt management and minimise economic losses.

The main KPIs of the pilot are:

• Surface processed: number of hectares of forest land monitored using different EO data sources (satellite/aircraft/RPAS) for the two assessed pests (Phytophtora & Gonipterus).
• Field visits saved: an assessment of how much fieldwork (number of hours) can be saved by using an adequate EO-based methodology will be performed.
• Economic improvements: an economic ratio will be obtained to assess the performance of the new methodologies (€/ha) and compare it with traditional methods.
• Accuracy of cartography obtained from different EO-data sources (% )
• Generation of new protocols for detection and monitoring of Gonipterus & Phytophtora using EO & field data (yes/no).
• Generation of new products & services available for final users (yes/no).
• Estimation of potential users (number).