Integrative and target-oriented forest management requires detailed information about forest variables for large
areas. Currently forest inventories are available on very detailed level but as punctual information, which cannot
consider spatial variability in high spatial resolution. Especially soil moisture information is an important
parameter for understanding the productivity of forest under changing boundary conditions and for estimating the
robustness of forest stands e.g. against droughts. A further key parameter is the species composition, which is
related to specific tolerance levels of the forest against environmental risks and its susceptibility against diseases.
The aim of 4D-FORMAT is the development of geospatial mapping products integrating i) traditional field
observations, ii) close-range sensing and iii) satellite remote sensing techniques describing moisture conditions
in forests. We make use of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite time series, high-definition topography data from
aerial photogrammetry and airborne laser scanning (ALS), 3D point clouds from unmanned aerial vehicle laser
scanning (ULS) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). The design of an object-based approach for delineating
hydrological-relevant forest units provides computational areas of interest. For these areas, moisture conditions
are aggregated considering the forest composition, canopy structure and geo-morphometric variability. We report
on the investigation of spatio-temporal patterns describing canopy closure and moisture signals considering local
topography and phenological status of trees. 4D-FORMAT (http://4dformat.mountainresearch.at/) is funded by the 13th Austrian Space Applications
Program of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency.
