Assessment of the impact of weather conditions on forest health status and forest disturbances at regional and national scale based on the integration of ground and space-based remote sensing datasets

The intensification of extreme weather events associated with a warming climate, especially droughts, is causing serious long-term damage to forest ecosystems. The threat of decline and the increased vulnerability of forest stands to biotic and abiotic factors are the main reasons why it is increasingly important to monitor the health of forests using modern remote sensing methods.

Project objectives:

• To understand and assess the impact of weather conditions on forest health and disturbances.
• To assess the vulnerability of forest to extreme weather conditions, with a particular emphasis on the drought effects.
• To explore the possibility of using satellite data to estimate quantitative and qualitative changes in forest health at local, regional and national scales.

• The project is focused on basic science.  Scientists, institutions responsible for forest management and monitoring, decision makers, organizations interested in the impact of climate change on the forest health.

The novelty of the project is a comprehensive and multidimensional, spatio-temporal approach towards the evaluation of responses of forest ecosystems to climate change.  The assessment of applicability of high spatial and temporal resolution of satellite images acquired by Sentinel-2, Planet Scope, among other satellites is a key asset for studying the health of forest stands using remote sensing techniques at local and regional scales.

Detailed analysis of stand characteristics and their habitats, including site productivity, forest parameters, and forest ecosystem disturbance, in relation to weather parameters, will allow us to understand the complex impact of climate change on forest health. By integrating satellite data with forest and weather information, the relationship between stand health and weather conditions will be investigated. The project will also perform long-term analyses of trends and anomalies of spectral vegetation indices, calculated from MODIS multispectral scanner over the period 2000-2022. The comparison of spectral indices with meteorological parameters and information on forest disturbances will help to understand the extent to which changes in forest stands are observable in different spectral ranges and are related to climate change.

The results of the study will improve knowledge of the impact of weather conditions on the health of forest stands and develop indicators and methods that could be used in the future to estimate quantitative and qualitative changes in forest health on both local, regional and national scales.

National Science Centre – program OPUS21

University of Agriculture in Krakow – Department of Forest Resources Management 

2024 – 2026

The National Centre for Emissions Management
Emission Inventory and Reporting Unit
dr hab. inż. Agata Hościło
e-mail: agata.hoscilo@ios.edu.pl