The signing of the Sat4Forest project contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) took place on Thursday 14 November 2024, at the Ministry of Digital Governance. The project will be implemented in cooperation with the Hellenic Space Centre (HSC).

The event included greetings from the political leadership of the Ministry of Digital Governance, as well as speeches from representatives of the European Space Agency, followed by brief presentations of the projects by the consortia that have undertaken their implementation.

The signing of the Sat4Forest project contract was held by the Rector of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Professor Charalambos Feidas, in the presence of the Scientific Manager of the project, Director of the Laboratory of Forest Management and Remote Sensing of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Professor Ioannis Gitas.

The project is being implemented under Axis 3 of the National Microdrillers Programme, with funding from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0”.

The Sat4Forest project aims to enhance the sustainability of Greek forest ecosystems through the use of advanced Earth observation satellite technologies. The project will design, develop, validate and deliver an integrated Forest Monitoring Service for Greece, using a range of satellite remote sensing data from various sources, but with the main focus on the exploitation of the very high resolution data of the National Microsatellite Programme. The latter is an ambitious programme of the Ministry of Digital Governance for the creation and use of a modern microsatellite swarm for various applications at national level, implemented with the assistance of the Hellenic Space Centre and the European Space Agency (ESA) and funded by the Recovery and Resilience Fund.

Sat4Forest consists of two sub-services: 1) Mapping of forest types and forest fuels and 2) Monitoring of forests and Natura 2000 sites. The project will support informed decision making in environmental and forest management and identify potential threats to forest areas by identifying four risk categories: urbanisation, deforestation, forest diseases and stresses due to increased drought.