Tartu Observatory helps Ukraine to develop monitoring systems for forests and water-bodies

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Tartu Observatory, University of Tartu, is cooperating with Ukrainian institutions to apply remote sensing methods and applications developed in Tõravere by our scientists for monitoring  forests and water-bodies.

Tartu Observatory has developed a method for airborne laser scanning data-based forest inventories and monitoring. To speed up the implementation into practice in Ukraine similar methods, we use Estonian datasets provided by the Estonian Land Board for typical forest inventory scenarios to estimate forest height, wood volume, and carbon for forest stands.

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For monitoring the quality class of water bodies, the scientists in Tartu Observatory have developed an application that uses multispectral images taken with scanners onboard Sentinel satellites and made available through the Copernicus programme. The application combines analysis of remote sensing data and in situ measurements. The approach helps to extend the spatial representativeness of expensive in situ measurements in monitoring points through predictive modelling and provides water quality estimates over the entire surface of water-bodies.

The project partners in Ukraine are the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, the National Forest Inventory Center of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian State Forest Management Planning Association. The project „Kliima.3.01.23-0142” is financed by the Environmental Investment Centre programme "Eesti panus rahvusvahelisse kliimakoostöösse ja rahvusvaheline kliimapoliitika-alane koostöö“.

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