Mapping natural forest by means of remote sensing

Project title:
Mapping natural forest by means of remote sensing

Objectives:
Evaluating possibilities of applying recent development in remote sensing for characterizing forest structure and naturalness is of great interest from a forest monitoring perspective. Thus, the main objective of the research was to develop methods to identify natural forests, with emphasis on old natural forest.

Funded by:
Norwegian Environmental Agency

Timeframe:
2017-2018

 

ForClimit

“Mobilizing and Monitoring Climate Positive Efforts in Forests and Forestry”

Lomnessjøen and Storsjøen, Hedmark county, Norway. Photo: Ole Martin Bollandsås

Forest potential in the climate policy framework remains underutilized and significantly under-mobilized. Questions about the relative uncertainty surrounding the assessment of carbon content in soils and trees have been one problem. The introduction of strategies for encouraging climate friendly efforts on the part of landowners and other users of wood-based products represents another side of the problem. And finally, how forest carbon is accounted, and thus incentivised or not, in national, regional and international frameworks, represents a third problem. We address each of these at depth. We analyze national level strategies emerging in the context of the 2015 Paris Agreement and how these incentivise the role of forests and forest-based resources in the climate policy framework. Further, we analyze national level incentive systems for encouraging carbon friendly actions on the part of forest owners and consumers of harvested wood products. With this knowledge in hand, we consider new technologies and methods for the more accurate estimation of soil and tree carbon, from the national all the way down to the landowner level. Likewise, we investigate potential mitigation scenarios at the national and local level in three case studies (Netherlands, Romania and Sweden), analyzing response curves to economic and policy incentives. Finally, we analyze how international and regional climate change mitigation strategies can be better linked to subnational incentive systems. The goal is to promote methodologies that will provide a more accurate accounting of forest carbon, and permit the greater mobilization of forests and forest-based resources in national, regional and international climate policy frameworks.

 

See project pages for more information: http://www.forestinventory.no/forclimit

HyperBio

HyperBio – using new technology to reduce costs and improve the accuracy of forest
inventory mapping”

Terratec AS will conduct an exciting research project with funding from the Research Council of Norway in 2015 – 2018. Partners in the project are NMBU-MINA and Norwegian Computing Center. In addition, an Italian research institute with – Fondazione Edmund Mach in Trento. The aim of the project is to develop a forest mapping method that provides more accurate and efficient forest information based on airborne laser scanning (lidar) combined with hyperspectral imaging.

See Terratec’s web pages for more information: https://www.terratec.no/forskning

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Estimating Forest and Shrub Aboveground Dry Biomass in the Tanana Valley, Alaska using Ground Plots and Airborne Lidar Data

The project is a part of the large project called “A Joint USFS-NASA Pilot Project to Estimate Forest Carbon Stocks in Interior Alaska by Integrating Field, Airborne and Satellite Data”. The project is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Carbon Monitoring System (CMS). NASA CMS is designed to make significant contributions in characterizing, quantifying, understanding, and predicting the evolution of global carbon sources and sinks through improved monitoring of carbon stocks and fluxes. Continue reading