Christian Ginzler

Function

Groupleader, Senior Scientist

Land Change Science

Remote Sensing

Contact

christian.ginzler(at)wslto make life hard for spam bots.ch

+41 44 739 25 51+41 44 739 25 51

Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL
Zürcherstrasse 111
8903 Birmensdorf

Site

Birmensdorf Bi HP C 71

Researcher-ID E-9544-2012

Research Interests

Digital photogrammetry
Remote Sensing and its application to ecology
Forest Inventory techniques
Image matching & 3D data analysis
Application of LiDAR (Airborne and terrestrial LiDAR)

FURTHER INFORMATION

Projects

Spectral screening for the early detection of a highly invasive beetle in Switzerland

The emergence of visible tree-stress symptoms caused by the emerald ash borer occurs only several years after its arrival and are hard to tell apart from those caused by soil drought. Here, we investigate the potential of reflectance spectroscopy as an early-warning screening tool.

FORWARDS: European Observatory to assess the vulnerability of forests towards climate change

FORWARDS aims to develop, test, and implement a European Observatory that will supply timely and detailed information on European forests' vulnerability to climate change impacts, and provide knowledge to guide climate smart forestry

Habitat Map Switzerland

The demand for the Swiss Habitat Map is very high. In order to meet the needs of the various users and to maintain usability, it is important that the habitat map is continuously maintained and improved.

Forest Resource Dynamic Monitoring

The joint project between Switzerland, Laos, Malaysia and China aims to research and develop the key technologies for forest resources dynamic monitoring and forest volume estimation based on ALS and other related remote sensing technologies.

Lebensraumkarte historisch

In diesem Projekt wird untersucht, ob es möglich ist, die Kartierung der aktuellen Verteilung der Lebensräume durch die Kartierung der historischen Situation für die Jahre 1950, 1980 und 2000 zu ergänzen, d.h. eine Periode mit zunehmender Landnutzungsintensität und abnehmender Biodiversität.

Sentinel-2 vegetation height models

The aim of the project is to generate annual vegetation height models for Switzerland based on satellite imagery from Sentinel-2. Within the framework of the Swiss NFI, a workflow will be implemented and the accuracy of the resulting products will be estimated.

ICOS-2: Integrated Carbon Observation System in Switzerland, Phase 2017-2021

Die Forschungsstation Seehornwald Davos wurde in den 80er-Jahren von der WSL initiiert und ist damit eine der ältesten permanent betriebenen Wald-Vegetations-Forschungsstationen in der Schweiz.

Copernicus Land Monitoring 2021-2025

Das vom BAFU finanzierte Projekt verfolgt die laufenden Entwicklungen im Bereich Copernicus Land Monitoring Services aktiv. Dies umfasst den wissenschaftlichen und technischen Support im Bereich Landbedeckung / Landnutzung auf schweizerischer und europäischer Ebene.

Remote sensing-based national forest damage assessment system

In the FNEWs project, a national remote sensing-based monitoring system for forest damage is being set up for Germany. In the WSL's work package the potentials of Sentinel-1 C-band data are analysed, demonstrated and operational procedures are designed.

Noise and Greenspaces

Can people in urban regions recover from stress in green spaces or is there too much noise? Researchers from WSL and Empa explore the audio-visual requirements green spaces have to meet to enable noise-exposed people to recover from stress.

Drought & beech: Effects of the 2018 summer drought on beech on the northern side of the Alps

In this project, we investigate causes for the impacts of the extreme summer drought 2018 on the vitality of beech trees in different regions of the Swiss Plateau and Jura.

Nationwide shrub forest distribution maps based on remote sensing

Information on the distribution of shrub forest is of broad interest. The aim of this project is a robust workflow to produce an up-to-date, nationwide and high-resolution distribution map of the two dominant shrub forest species in the Alpine region based on remote sensing.

Acclimation and environmental memory

Which are the main mechanisms conveying adaptation on the organ and whole tree level, how fast does acclimation occur and how long is an acclimation potential sustained?

SlimForest

We aim at providing the link between the belowground water regime, related to the triggering of shallow landslides, and aboveground structural properties of forests as well as between ground truth and remote sensing data in view of up-scaling from the local to the regional and supra-regional scale.

Habitat Map of Switzerland

Spatially explicit distribution of habitats in Switzerland

Storm damage indication map

Remote sensing methods allow a rapid, wide-area and objective overview of the forest damage after a storm event.

Give and take: how much water does soil retain for trees?

Establishing an inventory of soil water availability to trees in Swiss forest soils. This is done by means of model-based analysis of the water balances at 16 long-term monitoring sites in Switzerland, representing various geographical locations, soil and vegetation types.

Drought 2018 - TreeNet meets Sentinel2

TreeNet permanently measures growth and tree water deficit (TWD) of about 250 tree individuals in forests all over Switzerland with so-called point dendrometers. TWD has shown to be a reasonable biological indicator for drought stress and quantifies the amount of missing water a tree needs to reach full saturation. In combination with spectral anomalies of satellite-based indices (e.g., NDWI from Sentinel2ab) between 2018 and a reference period we test whether we can find a close link between the two drought stress indicators.

Spezialfälle und Fruchtfolgeflächen

Können Böden unter Gewächshäusern, in Gewässerräumen etc. auch ins kantonale Inventar an Fruchtfolgeflächen aufgenommen werden?

WebSnow

Integration of Webcam data for deriving Snow cover and snow depth from Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Pléiades data

Automatisierte Erfassung invasiver Neophyten an Autobahnen

Highways are important corridors for the spread of invasive species. In this project, an automated detection and mapping of invasive alien plant species based on artificial intelligence (Deep Learning) and computer vision was developed and applied on highways of the Swiss Central Plateau.

Grundlagen Lebensraumkarte Schweiz

Im Projekt werden bereits vorhandene und in Entstehung befindliche Geodatensätze für ihr Potential zur Erstellung einer Lebensraumkarte (nach Delarze, Gonseth, Eggenberg & Vust 2015) für die Schweiz evaluiert. Ein erste Prototyp wird erstellt.

Filling the land use gap

Mapping grassland management intensity in Switzerland with high spatial and temporal resolution satellite imagery

PleiAlps - Deriving 3D forest parameters from Pléiades imagery

Mountain forests provide a wide range services. To quantify these services provided, information about the 3D forest structure is essential. PleiAlps will lead to a deeper understanding of the requirements for generating an Alpine wide high detail forest map from satellite stereo-imagery.

Pan3D - Nationwide 3D data from historical aerial imagery

In this project we use historical, panchromatic imagery to process a nation wide (Switzerland) high resolution vegetation height model (VHM). This extends the time series of information about the forest structure in Switzerland an thus opens up a whole range of new research possibilities.

Primeval forest structures and biodiversity: A Swiss-Ukrainian research cooperation

The primeval forests of the Carpathians, which are similar to many forests in Switzerland with regards to tree species composition and growth conditions, are therefore of high interest to WSL as research and reference objects.

Remote sensing Uholka-Shyrokyi Luh

In order to quantify the vegetation in its 3D structure and to be able to model the topography of the surveyed area, a LiDAR aerial survey will be carried out during spring of 2017.

Vegetation height model NFI

For Switzerland, a national vegetation elevation model was calculated and updated on an ongoing basis. The ADS80 images routinely captured by swisstopo form the basis for the image matching workflow for deriving a 3D model of the landscape.

Countrywide Tree Type Mapping from Remote Sensing Surveys

Regularly updated information on the state, change and distribution of tree types (broadleaved and coniferous tree) is essential for forest related studies. The first data set consists of ADS80 aerial imagery. The follow-up product is currently being optimized using Sentinel satellite data.

Beurteilung von Schutzwäldern mittels Fernerkundung

Ziel dieses LFI-Projektes ist es, Methoden der Fernerkundung zur Beurteilung der aktuellen Schutzwirkung und Verjüngung von Schutzwäldern zu entwickeln. Im Fokus stehen die Möglichkeiten von terrestrischem (TLS) und flugzeuggestütztem Lasesscanning (ALS).

Wildfire, insect attack and windthrow in mountain forests are on the rise again

Eine internationale Gruppe von Forschern zeigt, dass zunehmende Fläche und Holzvorräte in Bergwäldern in den letzten 150 Jahren zu mehr natürlichen Störungen wie Waldbrand geführt haben.

Ressourcenverfügbarkeit im Schweizer Wald

[Translate] Um eine effiziente und zeitgemässe Waldbewirtschaftung zu gewährleisten, ist eine ausreichende Strassen-Infrastruktur und darauf angepasste Holzernteverfahren unabdingbar.

WML - WaMos meets LFI

In Switzerland, there are two very different forest monitoring instruments: The National Forest Inventory NFI and the socio-cultural forest monitoring WaMos. The aim of the current project is to bridge physical and social aspects.

Forest inventory on enterprise level

With a smart combination of data collected with terrestrial methods and remote sensing forest inventories shall become more efficient and practice oriented to serve the needs of a multifunctional forest management.

FORECOM Forest cover changes in mountainous regions

In the Polish-Swiss joint research project Forecom we will analyze historical forest cover changes and their drivers in the Carpatians and Alps. We will develop scenarios of potential future forest cover changes and assess the impact of past and future changes on key ecosystem services.

Monitoring the Effectiveness of Habitat Conservation in Switzerland

The project "Monitoring the Effectiveness of Habitat Conservation in Switzerland" aims to determine whether habitats of national importance (dry meadows and pastures, alluvial areas, bogs and fens, amphibian breeding sites) are changing according to their conservation targets and maintaining the same surface area and quality.

Snow Depth Mapping

Information on large scale snow depths is still mainly based on interpolated point measurements. New developments in sensor – and software technology for digital photogrammetry in the last two decades offer new possibilities to derive high resolution, digital surface models (DSM) even over snow covered high-alpine regions.

DEMalpine

We investigate the advantages and disadvantages of different remote sensing based technologies to generate such terrain models for high alpin regions.

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Publications WSL

Scientific publication article peer reviewed

Huber, N.; Ginzler, C.; Pazur, R.; Descombes, P.; Baltensweiler, A.; Ecker, K.; Meier, E.; Price, B., 2023: Countrywide classification of permanent grassland habitats at high spatial resolution. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, 9, 1: 133-151. doi: 10.1002/rse2.298

Waser, L.; Ginzler, C., 2023: Landesweite Datensätze zum Wald mittels Fernerkundung - der Beginn einer neuen Ära. In: Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft, WSL (eds), 2023: Neue Fernerkundungstechnologien für die Umweltforschung und Praxis. Forum für Wissen 2023, Birmensdorf. 23-30. doi: 10.55419/wsl:33059

Leiterer, R.; Milani, G.; Wegner, J.D.; Ginzler, C., 2023: ExoSilva - ein Multi-Sensor-Ansatz für ein räumlich und zeitlich hochaufgelöstes Monitoring des Waldzustandes. In: Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft, WSL (eds), 2023: Neue Fernerkundungstechnologien für die Umweltforschung und Praxis. Forum für Wissen 2023, Birmensdorf. 17-22. doi: 10.55419/wsl:33057

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Further scientific publications

Rüetschi, M.; Weber, D.; Ginzler, Ch., 2022: Active Learning zur effizienten Erstellung fernerkundungsbasierter Karten. Geomatik Schweiz, Géomatique Suisse, Geomatica Svizzera, 120, 9-10: 206-209.

Kükenbrink, D.; Marty, M.; Bösch, R.; Ginzler, Ch., 2022: Der Weg zu einer operationellen Waldstrukturaufnahme in grossflächigen Waldinventuren mittels naher Fernerkundung. Geomatik Schweiz, Géomatique Suisse, Geomatica Svizzera, 120, 9-10: 199-202.

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Magazine article and brochures

Kükenbrink, D.; Allgaier Leuch, B.; Rehush, N.; Abegg, M.; Bornand, A.; Hristova, H.; Marty, M.; Ginzler, C., 2022: Aktuelle Arbeiten mit naher Fernerkundung zur detaillierten Erfassung von Waldstrukturen. Infoblatt Arbeitsgruppe Waldplanung und -management, 18-20.

Schmidt, B.R.; Bergamini, A.; Ginzler, C., 2022: Wie haben sich die IANB-Wanderobjekte im Lauf der Zeit verändert? Comment les objets itinérants IBN ont-ils évolué au fil du temps?. Nature et Paysage. Natur und Landschaft: Inside, 35-39.

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WSL websites

waldwissen.net

Knowhow for forestry experts and all others interested in the forest

lfi.ch

Swiss National Forest Inventory NFI - a forest information service

envidat.ch

Access to environmental monitoring and research data

natural-hazards.ch

Warnings on natural hazards by Swiss federal authorities

slf.ch

WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF in Davos

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Christian Ginzler

Research Interests