Evaluation of the performance of forest structural indices under different National forest inventory plot designs
Forest structure encompasses a variety of attributes related to the arrangement of the forest components (e.g., trees, shrubs, deadwood) in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. Several indices quantify the structure of the tree layer; however, the performance of these indices under a nested plot design, which is prevalent in National Forest Inventories, is poorly understood. […]
Mapping megatrends shaping European forests.
European forests are changing rapidly due to environmental pressures and human actions, making it essential to understand the drivers and their potential impacts for informing management and policy. We quantify and map six megatrends affecting European forests: (1) climate change, (2) fire, (3) pests and pathogens, (4) forest cover and felling intensity change, (5) harvesting, […]
Large-scale validation of forest attribute maps across different spatial resolutions.
Fine-scale, spatially explicit forest attribute maps are essential for guiding forest management and policy decisions. Such maps, based on the combination of National Forest Inventory (NFI) and remote sensing datasets, have a long tradition in the Nordic countries. Harmonizing the pixel size among national forest attribute maps would considerably improve the utility of the maps for users. However, national […]
Mapping forest management regimes in Europe.
Forests provide a multitude of ecosystem services, such as wood provisioning, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and cultural value. Numerous European Union (EU) policies introduce diverse goals for forests, leading to inherent trade-offs when balancing different forest functions and targets. Effective planning is crucial for optimizing such trade-offs across Europe. This requires an understanding of the current […]
Enhancing forest biodiversity indicators in inventories through harmonized protocols
Forest biodiversity is a multifaceted term encompassing tree and shrub diversity and the diversity of other life forms such as animals or fungi. Extensive forest monitoring networks such as National Forest Inventories or the International Co-operative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forest plots have implemented biodiversity-monitoring protocols to satisfy increasing […]
Towards enhancing field-based vegetation monitoring: A deep learning approach for species coverage estimation from ground-level imagery.
Field-based vegetation mapping is important for environmental assessments. Often, the area covered by a species is estimated visually within a reference frame. However, such assessments are prone to observer bias and a large variability. We developed a deep learning pipeline relying on YOLOv8 models to segment species and estimate the percentage cover (%) of Vaccinium myrtillus (blueberry) […]
Uncertainty quantification for forest attribute maps with conformal prediction and k-Nearest Neighbor method
Forest attribute maps relying on remotely sensed data are increasingly required for local decision-making related to the use of forest resources. Such maps always have uncertainty, which can be challenging to quantify.
Small area estimators in a simulation test
The Finnish National Forest Inventory produces municipality level results either with an indirect model-based K nearest neighbor estimator or a direct design-based post-stratification estimator. Design-based approach is unbiased, but not always feasible due to low number of field plots.
Tree boosting with linear forest-type effects improves the performance of forest age predictions using airborne laser scanning and satellite data
Forest age is an important attribute from forest management and biodiversity perspectives, but its prediction with remote sensing data is difficult. Age is typically known in plantation forests, but not in managed or unmanaged boreal forests.
High-Resolution Pan-European Forest Structure Maps: An Integration of Earth Observation and National Forest Inventory Data
We developed Pan-European maps of timber volume (V), above-ground biomass (AGB), and deciduous-coniferous proportion (DCP) with a pixel size of 10 x 10 m2 for the reference year 2020 using a combination of a Sentinel 2 mosaic, Copernicus layers, and National Forest Inventory (NFI) data. In addition, maps of pixel-level uncertainty are provided.