A New Way of Monitoring Damage to Forests

A team of scientists from different departments at Belgorod State University have developed a new imaging system for remote monitoring changes to the make-up and density of the forest, allowing observers to quickly see the effects of fire, disease, and logging activity

The research was funded by the Russian Science Foundation, and has proved to be 90% accurate. The system relies on detecting subtle changes to the spectrum of light emitted by tree canopies, which involves overcoming a significant number of variables. The study was based on analysis of more than 1800 forest plots located in the forest-steppe of the Central Black Earth Region. Senior Researcher Dr Edgar Terekhin explains,

“The magnitude of changes in the difference in zonal spectral brightness coefficients in the three spectral ranges, can be used as independent variables in geoinformation models for the automated search of forest ecosystems with disturbed canopies.”

The new approach can be used to create maps of disturbed forests, which can be used by specialists who are involved in forest monitoring.

For the paper in Russian, click here.

Translated by Ian Turner, Belgorod State University

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