Forest Monitoring With Earth Observation
A smart monitoring tool for sustainable forest management and timber supply chain in combination with an innovative GPS-based round wood tracking system.
Legal Trading
Strongly reducing the possibilities of fraud in timber trade.
Environmental Impacts Assessment
By satellite-based near real-time monitoring of forest changes.
Illegal Deforestation Detection
Better detection of unauthorised logging operations.
Credibility For Forest Certification
Extra security layer for risk-based auditing and economical inspections.
Forests are home to an abundant biodiversity and one of the most precious ecosystems. Worldwide, up to every third tree is illegally felled. Roundwood with a worth of € 200 billion is produced globally every year. There is a significant lack of effective and digitalized forest monitoring tools with earth observation (EO) that allows detection of illegally selective logging activities as well offers independent spatial forest information for more targeted inspections.
These problems must be solved and can only be achieved through integrating a satellite-based forest monitoring system and an innovative GPS-based round wood tracking system to offer more efficient, cost-effective, and fraud-proof verification tools for sustainable forest certification.
"Earth observation as extra security layer for risk-based auditing and economical inspections."
EO-EnForCe - Earth Observation to Enhance Forest Certification
Forest certification is a process that fosters sustainable forest management by empowering consumers to purchase sustainable timber products and allowing timber supply chain members to prove the sustainability of their operations and products.
A major point of criticism towards certification procedures is that they rely on document-based assessments to evaluate forest management practices and do not explicitly monitor logging activities, environmental impacts or track individual timber supplies.
A satellite-based near real-time monitoring of forest changes allows us to detect illegal logging activities and to better evaluate local environmental impacts. A proof-of-concept will allow various user groups to test our products and services via a web-based interface after all data streams are combined in a secure cloud-based IT system. Certification bodies gain a better verification of reported timber harvests and can detect illegal and unreported logging activities. Remote forest regions can be inspected and assessed by satellite-based remote sensing.
The project is funded under the “Austrian Space Applications Programme ASAP” of The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).
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