TRANSFORMON - TRANSNATIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEM AND MONITORING OF FORESTS IN BOHEMIAN/SAXON SWITZERLAND

The forests in the Bohemian/Saxon Switzerland National Park (NP) are climate-sensitive ecosystems, endangered by droughts, bark beetles and fires. The forest ecosystems in the Czech Republic and Germany cross borders. However, monitoring and forest protection are not sufficiently linked across borders. The data and its analysis methods are not standardised. There is a lack of a networked information system (IS) on forests that provides detailed information on forest health and development that is freely accessible to institutions, the public and park visitors.

Project Objective

Cross-border cooperation between NP authorities, universities and the public is being intensified in order to synergise the monitoring and protection of NPs. The professional linking of the project partners supports the development of modern methods for forest monitoring. An IS will be set up as a freely accessible web portal in Czech, German and English, in which data on the history and present of the forests and current news will be presented.

In addition, the forest development of the NPs will be analysed. Long-term changes in forest ecosystems (since the 1950s) are evaluated using satellite data and aerial images. In selected cross-border areas, recent developments are analysed in high spatio-temporal resolution using drone and field data.