Earth Observation to Enhance Forest Certification

Forest certification is a process that fosters sustainable forest management by empowering consumers to purchase sustainable timber products and allowing timber supply chain members to prove the sustainability of their operations and products. However, current certification procedures rely mostly on document-based assessments to evaluate forest management practices. EO (Earth Observation) tools to explicitly monitor logging activities, environmental impacts or track individual timber supplies can save costs for field inspections and increase the trustworthiness of timber certificates.

The EO-EnForCe workflows exploit the synergies of global EO data cubes (Sentinel Hub) and a GPS-based timber tracking solution (Beetle ForTech) to improve spatial data used in forest certification and supply chain monitoring. Current certification procedures rely on document-based assessments to evaluate forest management practices and do not explicitly monitor logging activities, environmental impacts or track individual timber supplies. A satellite-based monitoring of forest changes designed by Joanneum Research allows us to detect (illegal) logging activities and to better evaluate local environmental impacts. The EO service is designed to operate globally and on-demand for user requests of any size and time period.