Bright

Healthy forests positively strongly influence the entire ecosystems, which is critical for the EU’s climate-neutral aim by 2050. However, climate change is increasing the amount and intensity of forest stress agents, such as drought, insect pests, and pathogens. Remote sensing techniques for forestry inventories have advanced remarkably in the last decades but are still not enough to efficiently monitor the biotic damage to forests. To fully address the current remote sensing challenges, after combining the complementary skills and expertise (Integrated photonics and high-sensitivity miniaturized spectrometer in Aalto, hyperspectral LiDAR (HSL) technologies in FGI, and forest ecology in UH), this consortium will (1) advance mobile ultrawide HSLs with the integrated photonics, (2) use the advanced HSL to investigate tree health mapping, (3) develop accurate and fast modelling and mapping assistant with artificial intelligence (AI) for sustainable forest growth.