FirST

Forestry has been suffering increasing economic damage from windthrows since the 1990s. This is due to more frequent storms with high wind speeds. As similar extreme weather conditions are to be expected increasingly against the background of climate change, the forest administration needs timely information on the quantity and location of windthrow damages in order to react promptly. In the first step, this includes the removal of impairments of the infrastructure as well as the quick balancing of losses. On this basis, timber processing can be planned to prevent a further loss of timber value as well as the consequential ecological damage caused by pest infestation. Satellite-based monitoring systems are considered to be the most important tools to provide timely information on changes in forest ecosystems, enabling decision-makers to respond rapidly to the consequences of natural disasters.

The project therefore focuses on the analysis of the potential of satellite and airborne data for the rapid and large-scale assessment of storm damage and its consequences for forest management.

The pools of continuous optical and radar satellite data provided by the Copernicus missions (Sentinel-1 and -2) and the PlanetScope small-satellite swarm will be examined for their suitability for providing the desired information. The focus is on the diverse characteristics such as spatial resolution and coverage, temporal repetition rate, radiometric quality and the necessity of further processing steps. They will have to be adapted to the requirements and possibilities of forest management. For the provision of windthrow reference areas, two airborne systems are compared. Both provide optical data as well as derived elevation models. Within this project, the combination possibilities of satellite and aircraft data for large-scale monitoring will also be methodically analysed. Particular attention will be paid to the temporally staggered qualitative requirements of the state forestry administration.