Copernicus Applications for Next-Generation Forest Monitoring

The European Commission proposed a Regulation on a monitoring framework for resilient European forests in November 2023.

It builds on Copernicus as well as existing national data and shall offer better information for decision making and policy implementation across Member States.

The intended monitoring system will be comprehensive and reduce existing knowledge gaps through scattered, incomplete, and outdated data on EU forests.

Besides the collection of better data for decision making and policy implementation, the proposed law will create business opportunities not only for the growing Copernicus and EO monitoring industry but also to forest owners for marketing their ecosystem services, such as carbon removals.

FUTUREFOR addresses key challenges deriving from the proposed law aiming at providing accurate and timely forest data for Europe.

The project will closely liaise with Copernicus Entrusted Entities and key national stakeholders to assess the deriving needs from the Regulation together.

The project will also support Ukraine adopting EU forest legislation, on its way becoming an EU member in the future.Based on our experiences in forest monitoring, Copernicus, AI and big data analysis the FUTUREFOR project will carry out research and innovation to establish the needed knowledge and propose products and workflows to explore the feasibility and limitations of innovative new and improved existing Copernicus-based datasets.

The project will build on operational services that members of the consortium already provide and experiences from earlier H2020 and Horizon European projects. FUTUREFOR will also investigate innovative aerial platforms collecting sensor and image data from the stratosphere.

Finally, three commercial business applications will be developed to demonstrate the business opportunities evolving from open Copernicus- and complementing forest data.