SLU - Forest Remote Sensing

📢 Position open! We are seeking a motivated researcher to drive the digitalization of forest management, focusing on developing and incorporating automated, cost-efficient methods for acquiring tree-level data to support precision forestry. www.slu.se/en/about-slu...

New hyperspectral drone pushes forest stress monitoring to a new frontier | slu.se SLU Forest Damage Center has expanded its capabilities with Sweden’s first co-aligned VNIR–SWIR–LiDAR hyperspectral drone system for advanced forest stress detection.

"With this system, we can see forest stress before it becomes visible to the human eye—sometimes weeks to months earlier", says Langning Huo when describing the co-aligned VNIR–SWIR–LiDAR hyperspectral drone system can be used for advanced forest stress detection www.slu.se/en/news/2025...

This week, we gathered together for SLU Forest Remote Sensing division days in the beautiful Lövånger to discuss our work and, most importantly, to get to know each other better and to have some fun in the gorgeous winter weather.

We are at the MoniFun project annual meeting in Madrid this week, working on developing advanced mapping tools for the European Forest Multifunctionality Monitoring System (EFMMS), aiming to produce accurate ecosystem service maps and enable real-time monitoring of forest changes using RS data.

Events like #Silvilaser2025 are great for networking, meeting colleagues, and exchanging ideas. Here are our PhD students Raul de Paula Pires and Cameron Pellett, Emanuele Papucci from Forest Resource Analysis, and our guest researcher Katri Mäkinen from UEF School of Forest Sciences in Quebec.

At #Silvilaser2025 last week, our PhD student Raul de Paula Pires presented his poster "Detection of stem crooks using a CNN trained on synthetic data" at the poster session. Raul will defend his doctoral thesis next month, so stay tuned to learn more about Raul's work!

We were at #Silvilaser2025! Our PhD student Cameron Pellett gave a talk on "Improved measures of forest structural complexity" as part of the "Characterizing forest structure and complexity" session, presenting the results of his study published in Nature Communications last week.

Improved "lens" reveals increased value of varied environments | slu.se A new method of measuring variation allows scientists to see complex reality more clearly. They find the benefits of a heterogeneous environment are greater for biodiversity than standard methods sh...

A new method of measuring variation allows scientists to see complex reality more clearly. They find the benefits of a heterogeneous environment are greater for biodiversity than standard methods show. Read more about the method developed by our PhD student Cameron Pellett www.slu.se/en/news/2025...

Disentangling dispersion from mean reveals true heterogeneity-diversity relationships - Nature Communications Foundational theory on how habitat heterogeneity impacts biodiversity is hindered by mean-biased heterogeneity measures. This study shows that deriving a mean-independent measure reveals monotonic positive relationships from formerly inconsistent hump-shaped observations.

🌳New paper discussing the relationship between environmental heterogeneity and biodiversity by our PhD student Cameron Pellett and his supervisor Professor Ruben Valbuena was published in Nature Communications today. Read the full open access article here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our PhD student Luiz Henrique Cosimo gave a talk on “Hyperspectral drone images indicate that green shoulder indices are robust in pre-emergence detection of spruce bark beetle infestation across spatial and temporal scales” at the UAV-g Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles in Geomatics conference in Finland.

Postdoctoral Position in remote sensing | slu.se SLU - Science and Education for Sustainable Life

📢 We're recruiting! 🌲 We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher with a strong scientific drive to contribute to the international research front on forest resilience in a changing climate. Application deadline 12 September: www.slu.se/en/about-slu...

Research Assistant Position in AI for Forest Damage Mapping | slu.se SLU - Science and Education for Sustainable Life

📢 Open position 🎄We are seeking a Research Assistant to contribute to the development of innovative, AI-based solutions for mapping forest disturbances using satellite data and deep learning. Application deadline 16 September: www.slu.se/en/about-slu...

Our PhD candidate Shivam Rawat was at IGARSS 2025 conference in Brisbane, Australia last month, and presented his PhD research focusing on understanding water dynamics in boreal forests using ground-based radar observations from the BorealScat-2 tower system.

Here are two of our open calls for grants, still accepting proposals 📢

The deadline for both is 21 September 2025 at 21:00 (UTC+2).

You can submit your application through this European Forest Institute page 🔗 efi.int/grants-train...

#FORWARDScalls

Five new FORWARDS-funded projects to characterise European forest disturbances kicked off — Forwards CAEFD, CE-ReDiFor, HALO-FARM, Image4Dist, TREAD

🏆🌲 Here are five more projects which were awarded #ForwardsEU grants to study the characterisation of European forest disturbances

CAEFD, CE-ReDiFor, HALO-FARM, Image4Dist, TREA: discover them in our news release 🔗 bit.ly/4m6ZpKf

@remote-sensing-slu.bsky.social @efieuropeanforest.bsky.social

Testing software updates for our Leica RTC360 terrestrial laser scanner and made a nice 3D model of the SLU building, using the amazing Potree WebGL point cloud viewer developed at Vienna University of Technology. Our terrestrial laser scanner has been funded by the Kempe Foundation.

New deadline for #ForwardsEU grants❗

Calls G-03-2025 and G-04-2025 deadline application has been extended to 21 Sept (21:00 UTC)📣

Both aim to link ground & remote sensing data to assess climate impacts on trees and forests.

Apply at 👉 efi.int/grants-train...

@remote-sensing-slu.bsky.social

Modern tools help us collect data from the forest. In terrestrial laser scanning, navigating the scanned areas of the plot can be checked afterwards on a map and a 3D-scene to ensure that the planned trees are visible in the image. But the GPS track can get lost and we need to correct the position.

We coordinate @forwards-project.bsky.social which will set up the ForestWard Observatory to improve the resilience of European forests by providing timely information on them. Watch @rubenvalpue.bsky.social speak about the project and its goals.

PhD Researcher: Forest Regrowth rates and carbon accumulation in forests and forest reserves in Europe (NextgenCarbon)

📢 Vacancy open in #NextGenCarbon! PhD position in carbon dynamics in European forests and forest reserves at Wageningen University & Research. A great opportunity to work for our project with wonderful colleagues. www.wur.nl/nl/vacature/...

Professor @rubenvalpue.bsky.social spoke at the @esa.int Living Planet Symposium yesterday, presenting @nextgencarbon.bsky.social and discussing how it addresses the current main challenges in carbon budget reconciliation.

New Calls for Grants open! — Forwards G-03-2025 and G-04-2025

New #ForwardsEU grant calls open! 🚨

🔹 G-03-2025: Linking stand-level information and remote sensing for climate impact forest monitoring

🔹 G-04-2025: Providing temporally resolved ecosystem-level information on the effects of climatic drivers in near real-time.

Apply: bit.ly/4nyj6wn

Preparations for the first annual #NextGenCarbon meeting in Paris at the beginning of June are in full swing! Our project management team at @remote-sensing-slu.bsky.social is packing and checking the printed materials for the meeting, and making sure that everything is ready for travel.

#GHGbudget

Boreal tree species classification using airborne laser scanning data annotated with harvester production reports, and convolutional neural networks This study explores the potential of spatially explicit Harvester Production Reports (HPRs) for automatic annotation of Aerial Laser Scanning (ALS) da…

📢 New publication from our Division! 🛰️ Raul de Paula Pires is the lead author of "Boreal tree species classification using airborne laser scanning data annotated with harvester production reports, and convolutional neural networks" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Today, on the International Day for Biological Diversity, we highlight the role of remote sensing in monitoring biodiversity. @rubenvalpue.bsky.social is a member of GEO BON network dedicated to improving the acquisition, coordination, and delivery of biodiversity information geobon.org

We are also on LinkedIn! If you haven't found us yet, follow us: @NextGenCarbon‬ www.linkedin.com/company/next...

#NextGenCarbon #NGC #climatescience #ghgbudget

On Friday, the Swedish Minister for Climate and the Environment Romina Pourmokhtari visited our remote sensing lab, where she met with Professor Ruben Valbuena and Research Engineers Mikael Egberth and Juha Niemi who explained the minister about the remote sensing methods our division develops.

Professor Ruben Valbuena's professorial inauguration lecture Measuring the complexity of forests by firing laser beams from planes and satellites will take place on Thursday 8 May at 15:50 in Studion, Undervisningshuset, Uppsala and online. The link will be available here: www.slu.se/en/about-slu...

Our researcher Langning Huo's docent lecture on Remote Sensing for Forest Health Monitoring: Innovations and Future Directions will take place on 6 May 2025 at 13:30 in P O Bäckström's lecture hall in Umeå and in Zoom. You will find the Zoom link on this page: www.slu.se/en/ew-calend...

NextGenCarbon is online! We coordinate this project that has just launched its website and social media channels. Give it a "follow" to stay up to date on all the exciting future work!