In: Wagner W„ Székely, B. (eds.): ISPRS TC VII Symposium - 100 Years ISPRS, Vienna, Austria, July 5-7, 2010, IAPRS, Vol. XXXVIII, Part 7B 
STUDY ON USER REQUIREMENTS FOR REMOTE 
SENSING APPLICATIONS IN FORESTRY 
B. Felbermeier, A. Hahn, T. Schneider 
Technische Universität München, Institute of Forest Management, Hans-Carl-v.-Carlowitz-Platz 2, 85354, Freising, 
Germany 
KEY WORDS: Forestry, User requirements 
ABSTRACT: 
State forest administrations in Central Europe have to adapt to future climatic and socioeconomic conditions. This results in new 
demands for actual and precise forest information - especially in regard to increasing forest damages by natural hazards. Therefore 
the data requirements of professional foresters were investigated to derive development goals for remote sensing applications in 
forestry. A questionnaire was sent to 655 professionals in Southern Germany and answered by 347 of them. Two third describe 
deficiencies in their forest information and 90 % of them expect improvements by the application of remote sensing techniques. The 
majority of the professionals want to be supported by a forest information system integrating existing data bases and remote sensing 
derived information. More than 200 examples were defined for the potential use of remote sensing applications. The majority of the 
examples are related to the management of natural hazards and the consulting of private land owners. Improvements of the present 
situation are expected especially by annual updates of the forest data bases at stand level resolution. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Remote sensing is expected to become more important for 
sustainable forestry in Central Europe. The main reasons are a 
growing number of geospatial applications, the reorganisation 
of the forestry sector, and the need to improve forest 
management especially in regard to forest damages caused by 
increasing natural hazard frequencies. The study therefore arises 
from the expected problems of information availability for 
sustainable forest management and addresses the information 
needs of forest professionals for remotely sensed forest 
information in Bavaria/Southem Germany. 
2. INFORMATION NEEDS 
An inventory of existing literature detected several user need 
assessments in forest remote sensing from regional to global 
scales (International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth 
Sciences, 1999; Beule et al., 2004; Institute of Digital Image 
Processing, Graz et al., 2000; Schneider et al., 1998; Blaschke, 
2002). In a globally comprehensive study the user requirements 
for remote sensing based spatial information in sustainable 
management of forests were collected from all countries 
(International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth 
Sciences, 1998) and can be used as a reference: 
- The most spatial information is needed in regard to 
planning/implementation, monitoring/assessment, area 
demarcation/mapping and policy development/advising. 
- The highest demand for remote sensing data exist in the 
fields of determination of forest area and its change, 
thematic mapping including past decades, monitoring of 
species and biodiversity, land use and forest land 
classification, forest production, and site classification. 
- New remote sensing data should be distributed annually or 
at least every 5 years. 
2.1 Demand on regional level 
In a workshop user requirements for remote sensing 
applications were collected from 21 experts of the Bavarian 
State Forest Administration using business process analysis 
techniques (Rosenkranz, 2006). As a result the following 
regional processes and demands for remote sensing were 
documented: 
2.1.1 Surveillance of sustainable forest management: The 
national forest inventory is not sufficient for the purpose of the 
state forest administration. Therefore a method is required to 
conduct a low cost regional forest inventory to quantify the 
forest area, forest age classes, tree species composition, vertical 
and horizontal diversity, forest stand height and density, 
growing stock and increment, and areas of damaged forest. The 
data are required on forest stand level and should be collected at 
least every 5 years. The regional inventory would improve the 
surveillance of a sustainable forest management of all forest 
owners - especially in regard to the detection of cleared areas 
and losses of growing stock. It could be used by further 
processes described below. 
2.1.2 Forest protection: The terrestrial detection of insect pests 
is time consuming and therefore always fragmentary. Hence 
remote sensing technologies are needed to improve the early 
localisation of the origin of pests, the prognosis of the 
propagation, and the development of treatment plans. The 
information is needed every week during the critical 
development phases of insects and has to focus on the detection 
of single tree species, dead wood, and defoliation on stand 
level. In the case of large scale abiotic and biotic calamities ad 
hoc data of damaged areas, damage intensities, affected tree 
species, volumes of damaged timber and reforestation areas are 
needed on stand level. 
Large-scale monitoring of the forest condition is presently 
based on the annual terrestrial surveys. In order to reduce 
monitoring costs remote sensing can be used to determine tree 
species, tree age, defoliation, discolouration and other visible 
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