EU Space Programme supports healthy forests

The EU Space Programme (Copernicus) provides Earth observation and related space services to monitor and protect forests.

• Main action: The EU Space Programme (Copernicus) delivers integrated data and services — including Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, CLMS, LCFM, C3S, CAMS, CEMS, Galileo, and EGNOS — to support forest monitoring and management. Key concrete details: the current 100 m global land cover product will be replaced by a 10 m LCFM product later in 2025, annual updates began in June 2025 for reference year 2020 and beyond, and monthly updates are foreseen from 2026; a Sentinel-2 image dated 11 February 2025 shows Perućica (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and a Sentinel-3 image from 18 August 2024 captured a 130-kilometer smoke plume from the Madeira wildfire.
• Background and supporting details: CLMS offers 10 products including the Tree Cover Density product; C3S seasonal forecasts were used by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) with industry partners to assess soil/vehicle-access conditions for sustainable harvesting; CAMS provides air pollution and deposition datasets used in the State of Europe’s Forests 2020 assessment; CEMS/EFFIS provides wildfire situation maps and forecasts up to six days for authorised civil-protection users; EGNOS improved plot sampling accuracy for the Italian National Forest Inventory.