On Nov. 21, the Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Institute (Iret) is holding a seminar titled “DRONESTRESS, novel approaches to vegetation stress monitoring” held by Dr. Pavel Alekseychik (Natural Resources Institute Finland), at the Iret Library in the CNR Research Area of Rome, at 11:30 a.m.
The DRONESTRESS project develops new approaches for monitoring vegetation stresses by combining remote-sensing done with drones with other monitoring techniques. The project fills gaps in assessing tree health, forest management, and understanding the impacts of drought and heat waves. Changes in land use, heat waves, drought, and pathogens cause intense and increasing physiological stress, resulting in defense responses such as increased leaf temperature, reduced photosynthesis and transpiration, and altered leaf color. In situ tree sensors, Eddy-Covariance (EC), and spatial radiometry provide information on the average scale of the ecosystem or for a few individuals. However, response strategies vary among individuals and species and can only be resolved by drone remote sensing. DRONESTRESS combines techniques operating at tree and landscape scales to gain better insight into stress dynamics. The newly developed methods for multi-scale assessment of plant health and stress will be applied in managed forests in Finland and semi-arid ecosystems in Australia.
DRONESTRESS enables understanding of vegetation functioning under extreme weather conditions and in response to pest attacks, promoting climate-smart harvest planning in forestry and contributing to the development of UAV measurement methods.
It will also be possible to follow the event remotely through the following link
https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/124a3d25-93d8-4590-bb9b-f43062a7ce04@34c64e9f-d27f-4edd-a1f0-1397f0c84f94