Forest health monitoring using radar and field experiments
Field activities will be in summer 2024, and some preparations may be required in spring.
Forest health worldwide is increasingly deteriorated by droughts. The launch of new radar satellites (2024) offers a unique opportunity to quantify tree water content, a primary indicator of vulnerability to water stress, wildfires and insect attacks, with high spatial resolution and global coverage. This could provide new insights of forest response to drought, and greatly benefit regional forest/water management and fire risk assessment. However, the lack of ground observations to calibrate/validate radar products hinders their widespread use. We need to exploit and develop automated ground observations of tree water content to support the use of these new radar satellites for forest water status assessments.
In this MSc research project, you will (1) test different sensors for quantifying tree water content, (2) relate that to radar satellite observations. This will require extensive field- and lab work. The fieldwork will be conducted in Speulderbos, an enclosed coniferous forest site in the centre of the Netherlands, managed by the faculty of ITC.
Konings, A. G., Saatchi, S. S., Frankenberg, C., Keller, M., Leshyk, V., Anderegg, W. R., ... & Zuidema, P. A. (2021). Detecting forest response to droughts with global observations of vegetation water content. Global change biology, 27(23), 6005-6024.
Humphrey, V., & Frankenberg, C. (2023). Continuous ground monitoring of vegetation optical depth and water content with GPS signals. Biogeosciences, 20(9), 1789-1811.
The topic can be adapted to Spatial Engineering by describing the problem from a broader perspective/angle. For instance, climate change can both increase (CO2 availability) and decrease (prolonged droughts) forest health. And there are many different views on how to manage our forests in a changing world, from ecological, hydrological, climate, and economic perspectives. Meanwhile, the time is pressing and forests grow slowly. The student can elaborate on the question to what extent monitoring tree water content can contribute to these discussions.