Post-Friederike forest damage assessment in Germany, Hesse (2018-06-08)

Activation date: 2018-06-08
Event type: Storm

Activation reason:
Friederike storm hit several countries across Western Europe in early 2018, causing extensive damages and traffic disruption. While centred over Germany winds speed up to 200 km/h caused[HTML_REMOVED] severe damage across the country.The objective of the current activation is to provide a baseline database to perform a damage assessment on forests, after the storm Friederike in support of planning and forest management activities in Federal State of Hessen.[HTML_REMOVED] The Hessen is the most forested state in Germany, covering up to 40% of its surface area. As such, the health of the forests is of importance to the economy of this region.Pre-event Forest UpdatingAn updated vector layer showing the pre-event extent of forests in the Area of Interest (AOI) is provided in the Land Use/Land Cover Feature Class (LULC).The forest classes of the German LULC dataset (2012) were updated using available pre-event SPOT 6 and 7 imagery (2016), acquired not more than 16 months prior to the Friederike wind-storm.This reference forest cover information was used as the base layer for the damage assessment area estimation.[HTML_REMOVED]Forest damages assessmentThe damage assessment in forest areas was performed by comparison of the pre-event (2016) and post-event (2018) satellite imagery from SPOT 6 and 7 sensors (1.5 m resolution).[HTML_REMOVED]Experienced photo interpreters looked for changes between the two dates. The changes detected were classified in three categories: Damage (clear evidences of damages, in red), Potential Damage (not strong evidences of damages, in orange) and Felling/clear cutting (areas under maintenance, in pink).[HTML_REMOVED][HTML_REMOVED]In a final step, some conclusions can be drawn:The majority of the delineated damage present evidence of maintenance works on the forestIt makes sense that the maintenance works in damaged forest of the State of Hessen were in an advanced stage, due to several reasons:The main business in the area is timber industry.Broken logs after Friederike could have been wasted if not cleared away from winter weather conditions as soon as possible.Economic losses can be mitigated if performing early maintenance works.The post-event imagery used was acquired 4 and 6 months after the catastrophic event.