1211 | 800 | Remote sensing assessment of Spanish pine forests evolution: health trends and priority areas to be managed | Javier Pérez Romero, María González Sanchis, Laura Blanco Cano, Antonio J. Molina-Herrera; Antonio del Campo García

In Spain, forest areas are largely represented by pine forests, occupying 38% of the forest territory. These forests are mainly characterized by mature pine plantations with high tree density, which in most of the cases are not properly managed in order to ensure their optimum provision of ecosystem services and functioning. In addition, when the effects of climate change are considered, the situations they face are even more difficult, compromising their sustainability. For this reason, it is necessary to carry out a general assessment of their physiological status (trends and current health) and, based on this, to define management priority areas as those which are currently facing an imminent risk of mortality and require active adaptive actions to be implemented. In order to analyze the current health status of all the Spanish pine forest stands and their evolution at the mid-term, this work will use remote sensing data to cover the whole territory of Spain. More specifically, it will consider data from the Landsat mission in order to obtain a multitude of spectral indices almost the last 40 years. The work will calculate the temporal trends of all Spanish forest stands and categorize their current health status, allowing to classify spatial patterns based on environmental and administrative information. These analyses will be helpful to identify which forest areas and pine species are showing the highest vulnerability in Spain and therefore to design priority management actions based on local conditions.

Javier Pérez Romero, María González Sanchis, Laura Blanco Cano, Antonio J. Molina-Herrera; Antonio del Campo García
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV)

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ID Abstract: 800