One of the main objectives of the FCM project continuation was to extend the temporal range of the pan-European growing stock volume (GSV), above ground biomass (AGB) and below ground biomass (BGB) maps. We are happy to announce that this objective has been achieved as a set of new pan-European maps have been made available in the FCM product portal.
Publications
13 posts
Last autumn, we had a visiting scientist from the University of Oviedo staying here at VTT. This gave us a great opportunity to test some of the FCM tools in his study areas in northern Spain, and thereby provided valuable information on the applicability of the methods in new areas.
EO data products are sensitive to variations caused by atmospheric or seasonal effects, sometimes significantly affecting forest variable predictions. When used repeatedly in the same area to monitor the development of forest resources these effects can cause inconsistencies in the time series. The Data Assimilation (DA) approach to be demonstrated in the Norway use case aims to mitigate these inconsistencies of forest variable values in the monitoring time series.
As you may remember, the European wide biomass mapping in the FCM project is conducted with the BIOMASAR approach developed by Gamma Remote Sensing. The same approach is used for the global biomass mapping conducted in the ESA CCI Biomass project. In the FCM project, the method is finetuned for European conditions and high resolution (20 m ) mapping. The approach is based on growing stock volume (GSV) estimation, which is subsequently converted to above and below ground biomass. The mapping uses only spaceborne radar sensors.
With all the challenges that the world is facing nowadays, it is increasingly important that science is closely integrated into our thinking and our everyday lives to support the choices we make. To highlight the significant role of science in society and the need to engage the wider public in debates on emerging scientific issues, the United Nations celebrates the annual World Science Day for Peace and Development on the 10th November. The day aims to underline the importance and relevance of science in our daily lives.
While waiting for the finalization of the plans for the project extension, we would like to highlight some key developments that took place since the end of the main phase of the Forest Carbon Monitoring (FCM) project. The project was highlighted in several occasions in different types of events and media.
As unbelievable as it sounds, two years have passed since the Forest Carbon Monitoring started. This means that we are reaching the end of the current project. The project set out to implement a prototype of an operational remote sensing-based monitoring platform offering a cloud processing system for forest biomass and carbon monitoring. The platform...
Country case studies linking the information from a national network of forest inventories and satellite data are needed to gain experience and build confidence on how forest-related greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring and reporting can benefit from evolving space-based biomass products. In the Forest Carbon Monitoring project, we had the opportunity to investigate this topic in Peru with our user partner the Peruvian National Forest and Wildlife Service (SERFOR).
A recently published paper on semisupervised UNet deep learning for forest height mapping provides ideas and understanding for potential future development directions of the carbon monitoring platform.
During the past six months we have been busy running hundreds of tests with different Earth observation (EO) data combinations and prediction algorithms in the seven testing sites in Europe and Peru. These tests were conducted to allow selection of optimal EO data and method combinations for the demonstrations to be implemented during the second year of the project.