On 19 and 20 June, the H2020 My Sustainable Forest project was presented in the Czech town of Krtiny in the Brno region. It was a session in which the project partners of the consortium formed by the European Forest Institute and other entities such as GMV, Föra, Madera Plus, Foresna and the Forest Owners Association of Lithuania (FOAL) took part along with 25 invited local forest actors.
The aim of the meeting, organised by the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology of the Mendel University in Brno, was to inform the Czech forest and wood industry about services and products for better forest management based on Earth observation data and satellite-based technology. In addition, the sessions focused on identifying the most relevant needs of Czech forest stakeholders, as well as discussing the usability, strengths and weaknesses of My Sustainable Forest’s services and products presented within silvicultural processes.
During the session it was stated that the greatest challenge for the Czech forestry sector is the negative impact of climate change on the vitality and stability of forests (mostly Norway spruce), especially extreme droughts and stress combined with massive insect attacks, such as bark beetles, which are causing high forest mortality and the collapse of the wood market as well.
The results of the My Sustainable Forest project can help forest managers and stakeholders more effectively manage this outbreak. In this sense, the products developed by this H2020 initiative can facilitate very accurate periodic forest inventories (especially the mapping of logging areas, species composition and volume estimation, etc.), saving time and costs, as well as monitoring forest vitality and pests for early detection of stressed or infested trees, which must be eliminated promptly.
‘My Sustainable Forest’ project aims at developing a pre-commercial service platform for forest stakeholders to integrate Earth Observation data into daily forest stakeholders’ decision making processes and operations. My Sustainable Forest is funded by the EU Commission H2020 framework programme for the period November 2017 to October 2020 under grant agreement No 776045.
