The University of Córdoba participates in the formation of the organization first database combining records of disturbances caused by insects and diseases forests from eight European countriesThrough remote sensing systems, satellite images and field data.
Forest damage caused by insects and diseases is increasing in many parts of the world due to climate change, as the decrease in plant defense mechanisms due to global warming causes forests to become more vulnerable to pathogens and diseases.
These disturbances jeopardize many of the beneficial effects that forests provide to the world.Such as carbon sequestration, water flow regulation, wood production and biodiversity conservation. “Having a complete and coherent map of what these disturbances are and have been in Europe is crucial to being able to understand and predict future events, thus protecting forests and their advantages,” the report’s authors state.
This unified European registry did not exist until now. An international team, coordinated by the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission, working with researchers Rocío Hernández and José Luis Quero from the Department of Forest Engineering at the University of Córdoba, has developed a new database of spatial information on forest forests. Disturbances caused by pathogens and diseases: European Forest Insect and Disease Disturbance Database-DEFID2.
“The common language of all the forests of Europe”
“We worked for months in an expert committee presenting different registration systems for these conditions in different countries and regions, and A series of connections were established that gave rise to this common system, which is simpler but very robust. This is a database that greatly reduces subjectivity and which we tested with data from different countries,” says Rocío Hernández, referring to this. “Common language for all European forest scenarios”. All countries will now be able to translate their records into the common language DEFID2 and make them available to the entire society through this open tool.
Database Contains over 650,000 georeferenced records Harmonized map of insects and diseases recorded in European forests between 1963 and 2021. The records currently cover eight different countries and were obtained using a variety of methods such as topographic surveys and remote sensing techniques.
“The important thing is that this harmonized protocol allows anyone to provide information to the database. In this way, we can expand the number of affected areas included to increase the power of predictive models and reduce uncertainty levels,” explains Quero.
Combining multiple information
Records in DEFID2 These include data such as severity and patterns of damage, pathogens, host tree species, climate-induced triggers, silvicultural practices and eventual sanitary conditions. Additionally, “There is a very interesting component: this is the first database that connects to remote sensing data,” says Hernández. In this way, the spatial pattern and temporal pattern of the damage come together.
The tool is complemented by satellite data from the Landsat Normalized Burn Rate time series of affected forest areas, an index that is very sensitive to sudden changes in vegetation. It allows to see the onset, duration and magnitude of the discomfort in question through images.
In addition to considering spatial and temporal patterns that facilitate remote sensing with data passing through the satellite at different times, there is a third important level of information: the interaction between factors.
As Quero explains: “Damage from pathogens and diseases is biotic damage (the internal structure of living organisms), but they have an abiotic history (external factors). So, Information on biotic damage coincides with environmental events such as drought, wind and fires. Both factors can be detected by remote sensing, and both past and future relationships between them are analyzed to predict whether certain environmental conditions are breeding grounds for a new disease or suitable for the development of a pathogen.
death of Quercus pyrenaicain oak and cork species; Decay and decay in conifers such as Scots pine, larch and Spanish fir are some of the cases of damage in Spanish forests, thanks to research by the University of Córdoba. These data have been collected by these researchers over 10 years and in a pioneering manner through various research projects focused on the use of remote sensing to document and analyze wood decay damage.
Reference work: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16912
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