FRESh LIFE – Demonstrating Remote Sensing integration in sustainable forest management

This evening at Bright, the night of researchers, our coordinator will present the FRESh LIFE project during a mini-conference about “New Technologies”. All the info in the images below or at this link.

A new paper from the our team of researchers.

Here below the abstract, you can find the full version on our publications page!

UAV Remote Sensing for Biodiversity Monitoring: Are Forest Canopy Gaps Good Covariates?

Abstract: Forest canopy gaps are important to ecosystem dynamics. Depending on tree species, small canopy openings may be associated with intra-crown porosity and with space among crowns. Yet, literature on the relationships between very fine-scaled patterns of canopy openings and biodiversity features is limited. This research explores the possibility of: (1) mapping forest canopy gaps from a very high spatial resolution orthomosaic (10 cm), processed from a versatile unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imaging platform, and (2) deriving patch metrics that can be tested as covariates of variables of interest for forest biodiversity monitoring. The orthomosaic was imaged from a test area of 240 ha of temperate deciduous forest types in Central Italy, containing 50 forest inventory plots each of 529 m2 in size. Correlation and linear regression techniques were used to explore relationships between patch metrics and understory (density, development, and species diversity) or forest habitat biodiversity variables (density of micro-habitat bearing trees, vertical species profile, and tree species diversity). The results revealed that small openings in the canopy cover (75% smaller than 7 m2 ) can be faithfully extracted from UAV red, green, and blue bands (RGB) imagery, using the red band and contrast split segmentation. The strongest correlations were observed in the mixed forests (beech and turkey oak) followed by intermediate correlations in turkey oak forests, followed by the weakest correlations in beech forests. Moderate to strong linear relationships were found between gap metrics and understory variables in mixed forest types, with adjusted R2 from linear regression ranging from 0.52 to 0.87. Equally strong correlations in the same forest types were observed for forest habitat biodiversity variables (with adjusted R2 ranging from 0.52 to 0.79), with highest values found for density of trees with microhabitats and vertical species profile. In conclusion, this research highlights that UAV remote sensing can potentially provide covariate surfaces of variables of interest for forest biodiversity monitoring, conventionally collected in forest inventory plots. By integrating the two sources of data, these variables can be mapped over small forest areas with satisfactory levels of accuracy, at a much higher spatial resolution than would be possible by field-based forest inventory solely.

During the AIT international conference 2018 in Florence, FRESh LIFE had an entire session dedicated to the project where all the partner presented the last results of their studies on the demonstration sites and discuss with the public about it.

Here below the link to our youtube channel where you can find all the video of the session!

Last November it was held in Arnhem (The Netherlands) the EFESC General Assembly.

Alberto Stefanoni (UCVV), assessor EFESC, was there to present aims and the first results of FRESh LIFE project. Here below some photo taken during his presentation.

On our YouTube Channel it’s online the video realized during the XI Congress of SISEF where we had an entire session dedicated to our project.

The presentations are avaiable for the download at this link: Pubblications