Central European forests are increasingly suffering from drought and heat stress as a result of ongoing climate change. This leads to a decline in vitality and increased tree mortality, which in turn results in the reduction or loss of important ecological, economic, and social forest ecosystem functions. Tree vitality and mortality, ecosystem indicators and ecophysiological processes have been intensively monitored and studied on small-scale monitoring plots (e.g., Level-II plots) for decades. Modern remote sensing methods for measuring surface temperatures using drones and satellites offer additional opportunities to integrate these studies and further develop forest monitoring. In November 2024, HortiBonn’s temp-2-stress project kicked off. It is a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) to analyze drought and heat stress in Central European deciduous forests using remote sensing methods.
temp-2-stress is led by Dr. Alexander Röll (University of Bonn) and carried out together with Simon Swatek (University of Bonn), in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Dirk Hölscher (University of Göttingen) as senior scientific advisor and project partners at the University of Twente and the Northwest German Forest Research Institute. The project duration is from November 15, 2024, to November 14, 2027. Drone flights, a central element of temp-2-stress, will primarily take place in the summer months of 2025 and 2026. The investigations in temp-2-stress cover mixed deciduous forests on Level-II monitoring plots along a north-south gradient in Lower Saxony and Hesse (Germany), as well as complementary plots from a forest irrigation experiment in the Hessisches Ried region (SiZuRi project).
More information on temp-2-stress can be found on the project website (english version; german version), which recently went online.
