Guest lecture at Education and Research Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management: “Monitoring our forests from space: The power of the Copernicus programme & Sentinel missions”
“Monitoring our forests from space: The power of the Copernicus programme & Sentinel missions”
Lecturer: Dr. Petr Lukeš a,b
a Czech Forestry Institute, Remote Sensing Branch, Frýdek-Místek, Czech Republic
b Global Change Research Institute AS CR, Brno, Czech Republic
Date: March 12, 2025
Time: 11:50-13:10
Venue: Educational Building 1, Auditorium 69
Forests cover vast areas of our planet, but until recently monitoring their condition and changes has been a major challenge. Now, with Europe's Copernicus programme and Sentinel satellites, we have powerful tools to observe and analyse forests in near real time. These technologies are changing the way we monitor deforestation, forest degradation and the impacts of climate change - critical issues for sustainable management and compliance with new regulations such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and the EU Forest Monitoring Law.
In this presentation we'll explore how Copernicus services and Sentinel missions provide practical data for forestry. Key examples include the suite of Sentinel satellite data and derived products, such as the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) and the EU Forest Observatory. We will also cover cloud-based solutions for interpreting source satellite data into products using the Copernicus Dataspace Ecosystem. These open-access satellite tools are helping researchers, policymakers and industry professionals ensure compliance with forest laws, combat illegal logging and support reforestation efforts. Whether you'll be involved in conservation, land management or policy-making, this talk will show how satellite technology is beneficial forest monitoring, making it more transparent, efficient and effective for a sustainable future.
Dr Lukeš is a remote sensing expert at the Czech Forestry Institute and a scientist at the Global Change Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences. His main scientific interest is satellite remote sensing with applications in vegetation monitoring. He is the author of more than 40 scientific publications dealing with various aspects ranging from optical properties of leaves and their theoretical propagation through the canopy to the retrieval of forest characteristics related to forest health and the wall-to-wall assessment of forest health trends.
This lecture is part of the joint project of Czech Aid "Strengthening the forest monitoring capacity of Ukraine for EU compliance (2024-2026)" between the Czech Forestry Institute and NUBIP of Ukraine. Students and faculty are invited.
