The monitoring of vegetation health and detection of vegetation stress is important for agricultural and forestry industries worldwide. As agricultural and forestry production is strongly influenced by ongoing climate change, it is important to understand the current trends as well as to continuously monitor future changes, both in natural vegetation and in managed environments. For example, vegetation in central Europe has recently been experiencing significant vegetation stress due to severe droughts, low soil moisture and pest infestations; also Norway, which has a colder climate than central Europe, has already had problems with vegetation stress caused by severe drought and by insects (birch moth). It is expected that this will become more frequent in the near future. For a systematic effort of dealing with the effect of climate change, it is necessary to solve problems comprehensively worldwide, and not only at the national level. This is particularly true for global applicability of approaches based on remote sensing techniques, where the verification of developed methods in a different environment is strongly necessary. Therefore, connecting related researchers and research institutions across Europe and building a wide cooperation network is essential.
the Follow-up meeting in Tromso, Norway (Event–Public)
Dialogue meeting between researchers will take place during the Expert meeting in Tromso and will be open to the public.
Topic to be discussed
Introduction and visit of NIBIO and NINA, the finding of mutual scientific cooperation.
Discussions about the possible bilateral agreement, future research collaboration, and possibilities of funding.
General objectives of the community. Options of knowledge and experience transfer, data sharing.
Land use land cover change in central Europe. Interpretation of land cover classes. Driving forces of the most important landscape changes. Cross-border cooperation in the detection of forest changes.