Abstract
Europe has acknowledged the need to develop a very high precision digital model of the Earth, a Digital Twin Earth, running on cloud infrastructure to bring data and end-users closer together. We present results of an investigation of a proposed submodel of the digital twin, simulating the worlds’ forests. We focus on the architecture of the system and the key user needs on data content and access. The results are based on a user survey showing that the forest-related communities in Europe require information on contrasting forest variables and processes, with common interest in the status and forecast of forest carbon stock. We discuss the required spatial resolution, accuracies, and modelling tools required to match the needs of the different communities in data availability and simulation of the forest ecosystem. This, together with the knowledge on existing and projected future capabilities, allows us to specify a data architecture to implement the proposed system regionally, with the outlook to expand to continental and global scales. Ultimately, a system simulating the behaviour of forests, a digital twin, would connect the bottom-up and top-down approaches of computing the forest carbon balance: from tree-based accounting of forest growth to atmospheric measurements, respectively.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 130-136 |
| Journal | GI_Forum |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2021 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
| Event | 12th International Symposium on Digital Earth: Digital Earth for Sustainable Societies, ISDE12 - Salzburg, Austria Duration: 6 Jul 2021 → 8 Jul 2021 |
Funding
Due to the nature of the models, optical multispectral data is recommended (Sirro et al., 2018) for estimating the forest variables and initializing the modelling process. For global coverage and unlimited accessibility, Sentinel-2 and Landsat are the preferred sources. Auxiliary data (field plot measurements, airborne laser scanning, very high resolution imagery, future hyperspectral and chlorophyll fluorescence imagery, etc.) should be included where and when available. In addition to providing the required EO data, the computing environment should support the implementation of the forest models mentioned above and provision of environmental and weather data required by the forest growth model. Such infrastructure in Europe is provided by the Copernicus Data and Information Access Services (DIAS), initially funded by the European Commission.
Keywords
- Carbon
- Digital Twin Earth
- Forest
- Modelling