The Forefront of Forest Remote Sensing Research in the World —Focusing on Reports in 2020—

Abstract

The forest ecosystem is often a key item in discussions on global warming and sustainable development goals (SDGs). In order to evaluate and discuss the functions of forests (ecosystem services) in the world, a universal research method is required, in which remote sensing data should be used as the base data. For forest remote sensing, there are continuous technological developments in areas such as multi-scaling and indexing. Additionally, sophisticated evaluation methods related to forest quality, such as indexing of biodiversity and ecosystem stress, have been reported. The practical applications for forest remote sensing are currently being promoted by integrating various field data. At the global level, Forest Resource Assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) assesses forest resources in the world, while for specific forest problems, for example in the tropics, the USA, Europe, northern forests, and Japan, remote sensing is being researched and used according to the characteristics of each ecosystem along with wide-area factors such as global warming. Therefore, various papers on forest remote sensing have been reported all over the world. This report focuses on such reports in 2020, and word clouds were used to scan the contents of the cited references in Japanese.