DATA TERRA CELEBRATES THE 11TH WORLD FOREST DAY
DATA TERRA CELEBRATES THE 11TH WORLD FOREST DAY
This March 21, 2023, Data Terra celebrates the 11th World Forest Day, established since 2012 by the United Nations General Assembly. To monitor the health, composition and extent of wooded areas, in France and internationally, Theia, Data Terra’s land surface division, mobilizes its teams each year and develops specific products to meet the needs of society.
Theia’s tools and products related to forest monitoring:
The result of close collaboration between public and private actors, researchers and users, these tools combine reliability and accessibility.
Cartography in tropical areas : TropiSCO
The objective of the TropiSCO project is to provide maps for monitoring forest cover loss in dense tropical forests, starting in 2018 and on a continuous basis. The Sentinel-1 imagery used has the advantage of offering a fine spatial resolution and allowing the detection of forest cover losses with a minimum delay, whatever the weather conditions.
The project, labelled by the Space Climate Observatory (SCO) in 2021, is led by GlobEO in close collaboration with CNES and CESBIO. The proposed tools have been developed from work carried out in Theia within the Forest Biomass and Changes in Forest Cover SEC.
Automatic detection of forest stands: the case of poplar in France
Mapping of the species composition of forests and their monitoring is still a major concern for forest managers, especially for fast-growing species that require even more regular monitoring.
The case of planted poplars is emblematic, with the recurrent difficulty of the French poplar industry to evaluate the national resource available each year. The existing maps offer in fact not very precise estimates, sometimes divergent, and are not updated regularly enough. Automatic detection of forest stands from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery therefore offers a solution.
This product is the result of a collaboration between the UMR Dynafor, the Conseil National du Peuplier, representative of the industry in France, and the Centre National de la Propriété Forestièreand is distributed as part of the Theia Land cover SEC.
Detection and monitoring tool for temperate forest bioagressors, especially spruce and fir bark beetles
Temperate forests are undergoing the effects of global changes in a direct way (hydric and thermal stress, biological invasion) and indirectly (insect attacks, fungi, fires…). These factors cause the explosion of numerous sanitary problems affecting a variety of coniferous and deciduous species and an important over mortality. In France, bark beetle attacks are currently affecting spruce and fir trees over a large northeast quarter of France since 2018, following strong periods of drought. This sanitary crisis has a significant impact on the forestry and wood industry, with environmental, economic and social consequences.
In order to overcome the lack of information, fordead, a python package, was developed by TETIS for the Forest Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and the ONF, as part of the “Forest Health” project (DSF, DGPE, INRAE TETIS, ONF, CNPF), and distributed as part of the Changes and health of temperate forest SEC.
Regular and popular events:
The development of these tools involves Theia and IR Data Terra in numerous public (IRD, CNES, CESBIO, ONERA, …) and private partnerships. Thematic workshops and other training sessions are regularly organized to disseminate them and to collect the needs of the forestry industry:
Workshop Remote Sensing Uses for Forestry
At the beginning of October 2021, in Montpellier, the presentations of the guests covered the distinction of species, monitoring of deforestation, diseases, estimation of biomass or sequestered carbon with, as objectives:
– To introduce a selection of tools and operational products from satellite observation of forests contributing to the characterization of forest ecosystems and their evolution;
– To put in contact the researchers at the origin of the products and the community of users interested in their use (scientists, decision-makers, technicians of the administrations, research departments, private companies, associations, etc.)
Remote sensing and forest health workshop
This workshop, dedicated to the health of temperate forests, was held at the end of 2022 in Nancy, France, and was organized by Theia, ONF, CNES, CNPF, IGN and INRAE. The workshop was intended for representatives of the forestry field: forestry development and management managers, representatives of public or private management organizations, advisors to owners and managers, technical representatives of public authorities, as well as public or private research, R&D or operational operators involved in this field. Its objectives were :
– To present a state of the art of remote sensing in forests, highlighting the most mature products and relying on feedback from users,
– To propose a specific animation to the scientific community and users around the uses of remote sensing promoting exchanges on the needs and challenges.
« Hack 4 Forest » Hackathon
The Hack4Forest took place during the One Forest Summit, a global summit to implement the major ambitions of the COP15 biodiversity in Montreal. For its first edition, organized in Libreville (Gabon) on March 1st and 2nd, 2023, this summit proposed scientific and economic solutions to forest countries to help them reconcile the demanding protection of the forest and direct economic interest, with the ambition to advance the collective will of preservation and sustainable management of tropical forests.
For this occasion, DATA TERRA and PNDB were present alongside IRD, INRAE, CIRAD, ETALAB, AGEOS and SING.
Intended for the scientific community as well as for public and socio-economic actors, Data Terra’s cluster data and services are accessible through our portals, enabling inter- and transdisciplinary research.
The main objective of Data Terra as a thematic reference center for Earth System and Environment will be to foster the integration of data in the fields of Earth System, Biodiversity and Environment in the future. In addition to the tools developed within the Theia cluster, other Data Terra clusters will bring to bear data around forests, for example the atmosphere data of the Aeris cluster or the use of very high spatial resolution images of the Dinamis device. One of Data Terra’s key ambitions is to foster and enable greater integration between these specialized work and resources, both to enrich our understanding of how the Earth system works, and to address the societal and environmental challenges of our time.
