Kaori Otsu
Research Group Methods and Applications in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GRUMETS) at CREAF
Sessions
In alignment with the European Green Deal’s strategies, forest monitoring is crucial to fill the existing information gaps and create a comprehensive forest knowledge base. Based on the 4th Spanish National Forest Inventory collections updated in 2017, we assessed remote sensing data derived from various sources as complementary information to support forest ecosystem monitoring in Catalonia over the last decade. Our study areas focused on regional natural parks designated by Natura 2000 where deciduous tree species (Fagus sylvatica, Castanea sativa) are well represented to analyse key biophysical variables known as Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) such as LAI and FAPAR. The data products compared in this study include high-resolution vegetation maps with new algorithms provided through cloud-based platforms such as Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem and Google Earth Engine. Specifically, we referenced Sentinel-2 based EBVs from BioPAR by VITO and World Reforestation Monitor by ETH Zurich. In discussion our challenges and opportunities associated with data interoperability and quality are addressed.