Forests are one of Earth’s most valuable ecosystems, but also a renewable resource for many industries, such as construction, furniture, or clothing. To sustain a continuous supply of this resource, forests must be prevented from collapsing. Beetle ForTech has thus developed a timber traceability solution that comprises two dimensions: monitoring and tracing. Its satellitebased forest monitoring system uses Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data to observe ongoing activities in forests and determine whether they are legal or not. Activities like harvesting, biomass extraction, and regrowth are observed in forest locations to provide information on timber origin, legal status, and volume, thereby enabling sustainable forest management. In combination with this Copernicus-based tool (which is funded by Austria’s national space programme), Beetle ForTech has also developed an interconnected, GNSS-based, in-situ log tracing system that helps track individual harvested trees throughout supply chains to verify their exact origin and prevent the trading of illegal timber.
Beetle ForTech GmbH
Matthias Sammer, Sebastian Vogler, Koimé Kouacou, Anh Nguyen
matthias.sammer@beetlefortech.com
