Forest Health Monitoring for France Using National HD LiDAR

Background

Climate change has increased the need for large-scale, data-driven forest-health assessment across Western and Central Europe. The goal of the project was to provide French forest owners and managers with a modern tool for identifying emerging health risks and strengthening long‑term forest resilience.

Arbonaut and Forestry France were selected as winners of the 7th IGNfab call for projects, “Give relief to your projects with LiDAR.”

Together, we developed an innovative forest-health monitoring solution using France’s national HD LiDAR dataset, acquired by IGN to stimulate new digital services and applications across the country.

Solution

Building on Arbonaut’s R&D experience in Sweden and Finland, the solution combined HD LiDAR, remote‑sensing data, and field observations to map risk indicators such as tree stress, mortality, and structural vulnerabilities.

The primary objective of this project was to improve understanding of forest ecosystems by producing reliable and detailed information on the current state of forests:

  • Species composition
  • Stand structure
  • Tree health
  • Detection of dead trees
    • Stress tree identification

    Identifying stress trees

    Detection of deadwood

    Detection of dead trees

    The solution was prepared for deployment to forest owners and managers across France through the Forestry France.

    The resulting risk analyses equipped forest owners with practical tools to plan timely interventions and strengthen forest resilience. It demonstrated the strong potential of HD LiDAR and multi‑source data to advance climate‑resilient forestry practices in France at national scale.