Novel avenues to forest monitoring

Novel avenues to forest monitoring – upscaling from past and presence to future, from trees to the country scale for securing one of Switzerland's most important natural resources

Forests provide a myriad of ecological, economic, and climatic benefits, but they are highly vulnerable to climate extremes. Climate-driven forest health degradation and tree mortality caused by drought and heat stress have been observed worldwide and are expected to increase with ongoing climate warming. Hence, there is a clear need to identify forest ecosystems that are most vulnerable to these changes and understand why some ecosystems are more sensitive to extremes than others. We will link high spatial and temporal resolution remote sensed data with traditional ground-based forest monitoring data, novel close-to-real time tree and ecosystem level assessments, and belowground information to identify key proxies of forest drought stress, tree health, and mortality risk.

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