The power of satellite monitoring in European forests

Information session with European campaigning organisations

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When:

Monday 6 September, 10h30-12h30 (Brussels time - CET).

Background:

The European Commission recently released its Forest Strategy, outlining its commitment to increase monitoring of European Forests. The Strategy states that the Commission will issue a legislative proposal for a Forest Observation, Reporting and Data Collection framework. This will establish an EU-wide integrated forest monitoring framework, using remote sensing technologies and geospatial data integrated with ground-based monitoring, which will improve the accuracy of monitoring.

It states that: “Regarding the monitoring, the focus should be on regular and more frequent cost-efficient reporting and update of data on priority EU policy-relevant topics, such as effects of climate change, biodiversity, health, damages, invasive alien species, forest management, and the biomass use for different socio-economic purposes. Monitoring has to be done with high spatial and temporal granularity. Timeliness is particularly important also due to the rapid unfolding of forest natural disturbances. The framework will benefit from the EU Space Programme components and should leverage Galileo and Copernicus services to improve these processes.”

Given the renewed focus on satellite monitoring, the European Space Agency have kindly offered to hold a webinar to explain the technical potential of the Corpernicus satellite to monitor forests. Increased understanding of the technical potential of satellites could feed into NGO reflections over the political potential of using satellites in NGO campaigning work.

Agenda:

• Introduction 
  - Kelsey Perlman, Fern
• Presentation of the Forest Strategy and the Forest Information System for Europe
  - Raphael Lelouvier, DG Environment, European Commission 
• Presentation of Copernicus and relevance for European forest monitoring
  - Frank Martin Seifert, Earth Observation Application Engineer, European Space Agency 
• Presentation of 'Abrupt increase in harvested forest area over Europe after 2015' article
  - Guido Ceccherini, Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission (link to original article)
• Intervention from Fred Stolle, Deputy Director of Forests, World Resources Institute (WRI) and Ranja Luszczek, Client Earth, sharing thoughts for how this could be developed and pursued further by European civil society
• Q&A and debate with participants:
  • Lessons learnt from experience of using satellite data in your campaign work
  • How could satellite monitoring help your campaigning for better forest health? 
• Wrap up
  - Hannah Mowat, Fern