Members of the European scientific community came together in support of remote sensing technologies in forest monitoring in an open letter that was recently made public. Seventy-eight researchers and experts in the forestry field backed the document’s primary objective - to stress the importance of this type of solutions to the future of forest management and conservation in Europe. To the signatories, it is crucial that this fact is considered now at the European policy-making level as an EU-wide Forest Monitoring Law is coming together at present.  

In this context, remote sensing via Earth observation technologies is singled out as a method with a key role to play in ensuring compliance with European forestry regulations in pursuit of sustainability across this biome. It is namely in the development of this approach that the document sees a critical possibility for research projects to contribute with their insights. 

For that purpose, the letter provides a list of such EU-funded initiatives that are actively working to develop and enrich the landscape of remote sensing tools, guidelines and applications in the forestry sector. Examples within it include ForestPaths as well as partner projects FORWARDS, ForestNavigator, PathFinder, CLIMB-FOREST and MoniFun. 

You can find more information about ForestPaths’s research into Earth observation here.