Bark Beetle Early Detection and Forest Analysis Tools – Innovative Technologies for Copernicus Data.

Summer droughts and increases in windthrow in Central Europe have led to record levels of bark beetle damages in 2018 and the following years. Bark beetle outbreaks are feared to continue at catastrophic level. In order to better manage bark beetle crises, there is an urgent need for spatial information on new bark beetle infestation in order to rapidly initiate forest management activities, such as sanitary logging. Our prototype of a near real-time bark beetle monitoring system produces bi-weekly digital maps of recent bark beetle infestation from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.

When rolled-out, the bark beetle monitoring service provides rapid spatial information on current bark beetle infestation on a large-spatial scale. Currently, status updates are generated every 14-days. This data allows forest administration and forest owners to continuously monitor their forest. In case of an infestation detection or warning, foresters can initiate appropriate forest management activities at an early stage and thus prevent a larger bark beetle infestation outbreak. This not only saves money, but preserves the forests' important socio-economic functions.