Monitoring & Prognosis

Monitoring in forest protection is the recording of specific parameters of potential risk factors. Standard monitoring methods that are performed routinely exist for the most important risk factors, such as wildfires, needle or leaf eating insects that frequently occur or tend to develop mass outbreaks, and important bark beetle species. They are used for an early detection of their occurrence or changes in their occurrence. Nowadays wildfires in Germany are almost exclusively located by camera und computer based automatic detection and monitoring systems, although the first detection is also often reported by people from the surroundings by phone.

Sampling methods are described for other potential risk factors. They may include catching adult organisms by using traps baited with lures or recording other diagnosis objects. Depending on the occurrence or the development state of the potential risk factors as well as the results of the prognosis, monitoring methods are implemented on a basic level or are intensified and extended to further procedures.

Prognosis in forest protection is the prediction of the further development of the occurrence of potential risk factors (development, population and infestation prognosis) and/or the damage that is to be expected (damage prognosis). The prognoses include the type and degree of the expected damage as well as its extent in terms of the size of the area that will be affected.

The results of prognoses regarding organisms are often compared to known critical values in order to indicate the stability or elasticity of the affected forest, or its instability. In doing so, several aspects such as already existing deviations from the normal state, reactions of antagonists, the possible adaptation of affected trees or the habitat changes for pest organisms have to be taken into account. As a result, the probability is indicated for the occurrence of consequences caused by the activities of the potential risk factors. The prediction’s target accuracy of 80 % is often not achieved when it comes to biotic risk factors, since forest ecosystems with their great variety of interactions, which also covers potential risk factors, are still not fully studied and understood from a scientific point of view.

If the prognosis says that the objectives of forest owners or even higher ranked interests of society are at risk, a decision has to be made on whether the potential risk factors have to be eradicated or, alternatively, have to be accepted and compensated for.