New grants to build forest monitoring capacities in Ukraine

EFI is offering an opportunity for Ukrainian researchers to develop their capacities in the field of forest monitoring.

Five grants of 30,000 EUR from the EFI Network Fund are available to Ukrainian researchers, to develop their capacities in the field of forest monitoring and explore the suitability and robustness of different monitoring procedures in the context of Ukraine.

Forests in Europe provide a range of ecosystem services, playing a vital role in fighting climate change. However, the lack of consistent and comprehensive pan-European forest information products and a coordinated monitoring system currently hampers the effective use of all available forest information. While National Forest Inventories are the main source of data, these face several limitations: disparate methodologies, high data collection costs, and difficulties to access data. Moreover, many remote sensing resources that have only recently become available are not optimally integrated into Europe-wide-forest information products.

The importance of a comprehensive and reliable forest data is reflected also in the number of European projects that are currently implemented in this field. For example, the EFI Network Fund is funding the EFINET project, which is developing a conceptual framework to derive pan-European forest information products and close-to-real-time monitoring of forest changes, forest structural variables, forest biodiversity and forest health at European level. A system which combines remote sensing and auxiliary inventory-based data is of particular interest for countries where no national forest inventory data is available.

The supported activities will be implemented within various projects currently carried out by EFI and its Associate Members (organisations), and will address the following topics:

• Topic 1: Evaluation of forest disturbances in Ukraine through remotely sensed data
• Topic 2: Mapping core forests in Europe
• Topic 3: Monitoring the effects of restoration interventions on biodiversity and ecosystem services
• Topic 4: Forest data infrastructures supporting the ForestWard Observatory to secure the resilience of European forests
• Topic 5: Ecosystem service monitoring in Ukrainian forests

The deadline for the call is 30 October 2022 at 23:00 UTC.

To read the full call text and access the other related documents, see here.