Forest Flux – World-first service of high-resolution maps of forest carbon fluxes, storage and their development over time – Final Report available

 

The services, developed in the Forest Flux project give timely information on the state of forest resources, carbon and their development over time. They thus improve the profitability of forestry and information on the value of forest asset while help ensuring its ecological sustainability.

Forest Flux renews forestry value added services in Earth Observation (EO) by creating and piloting cloud-based services for committed users on forest carbon assimilation and structural variable prediction. The services are provided in the form of digital maps and statistical information. Copernicus satellite images are the main source of EO data.

The services are driven by sustainable forest management, EU forest strategy, the Bioeconomy Action Plan, and the demands of environmentally aware end-users of wood industry products.

Until recently, detailed information on forest carbon cycle has not been available due to a lack of scientific understanding, spatial data availability, limited processing capacity, and the complexity of implementing this information in business processes.

Forest Flux  exploits the explosive increase of high-resolution EO data from the Copernicus program and developments of cloud computing technology. It  implements world-first service platform for high-resolution maps of traditional forestry variables together with forest carbon fluxes. Forest Flux allows the users to improve the profitability of forest management while taking care of the ecological sustainability.

Forest Flux uses a holistic approach in a single processing chain. Already during the project, forestry and carbon data were integrated into the decision-making processes of selected core users.

The Forest Flux services are implemented on the Forestry Thematic Exploitation cloud platform https://f-tep.com/

Forest Flux will establish the leadership of European industry in the sustainable utilization of forest resources. The computing infrastructure is specifically targeted for EO data and forestry users, and it will be fully functional by the end of the project.

The web-based human and machine interfaces will allow market access unrestricted by country boundaries and facilitate easy commercial interactions of players of different sizes and backgrounds.

Dedicated user involvement, strong commercial interests, rapidly developing online markets, and demonstrated excellence of the consortium make the Forest Flux service platform sustainable beyond the end of the project.