Forest Observation with Remote Sensing Technologies

The Forest Observation with Remote Sensing Technologies (FOReST) research group, located in the University of Canterbury’s School of Forestry, was founded in 2018 by Professor Justin Morgenroth. Today, the FOReST research group is co-directed by Professor Justin Morgenroth and Senior Lecturer Dr. Cong (Vega) Xu. Our research group is dedicated to researching the applications of remote sensing and geospatial information science to forested environments.

Our ongoing research projects include evaluation of the ecosystem services of urban forests, native and plantation forest mapping, and forest monitoring using remote sensing data, such as drones, LiDAR, and satellite imagery.

We're excited to share our efforts to assess urban tree canopy cover for the 75 largest cities in New Zealand. These canopy cover reports can be downloaded freely here.