Dataset Forest@Risk

This report documents the collection of forest disturbance datasets for the Forest@Risk project.

Here a brief description of the project:

European forests provide a set of fundamental services that contribute to climate mitigation and human well-being. On the other hand, forests are vulnerable systems because the long life-span of trees limits the possibility of a rapid adaptation to drastic environmental changes. Climate-driven hazards on forests, such as drought, wildfire and insect outbreaks, are expected to rise drastically in view of global warming. As a result, key forest services, such as carbon sequestration and supply of wood products, could be seriously affected in the near future. Despite the relevance and urgency of the issue, little is known about the upcoming risks of multiple climate-related hazards on European forests. To fill this knowledge gap we aim to investigate the evolution of forest disturbances under various climate scenarios. For this scope we will model the long-term changes in species composition, whereas forest vulnerability will be assessed with satellite observations and records of disturbances. The integration of these elements will produce a range of plausible risk estimates to support the definition of effective adaptation strategies, with the goal of increasing the resilience and long-term stability of these fundamental elements of the European landscape.

In order to investigate the vulnerability of forest to climate change, we have collected data of forest disturbances that occurred in Europe and US over the 2000-2017 period.

The areas of interests are: 1) US, and 2) Europe. The US are included in the study because the abundance of data of forest disturbance due to insect outbreaks compared to EU. The number of EU records is abysmal compared to the US.

The period of study is 2000 – 2017. In this way we can merge forest disturbance information with remote sensing imagery. From 2000 onwards there are systematic satellite acquisitions over Europe and US, whereas before the data availability (in terms of both spatial and temporal resolution) does not allow an accurate study of forest disturbance dynamics.

The forest disturbance dataset consists in 3 different archives:

1) USDA (forest disturbance across US)

2) EFFIS (European forest fires)

3) WIND (European windthrown dataset)

and ancillary information from:

1) ESA Globcover (land cover)

2) Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD, a proxy for biomass)

3) Hansen maps of deforestation

4) Koppen Geiger Climate Classification

5) Biomass data

6) Leaf Area Index (LAI) from satellite

Other relevant documents are in the annex folder.