At European level, storm damage is one of the biggest causes of damage in the area of weather and climate extremes, and the proportion of economic damage caused by winter storms in the EU has increased since 2005. Storms also cause several million cubic metres of damaged timber per year in the forestry sector. Models show that the severity and frequency of storm events in Central and Western Europe will increase.

WINMOL is a joined project of the Eberswalde University for Sustainable development and the Thünen Institute for Exosystem Research Eberswalde for the analysis and modeling of storm damages in forests.

As part of sub-project 1, an integrative approach to detection and quantification was developed, consisting of the detection of windthrow areas based on Copernicus Sentinel-1 data (WP 1) and the detection and quantification of wind-damaged trunks on the detected areas using UAVs (WP 2). With the “WINMOL Analyzer”, a fully automated QGIS plug-in for analysing UAV orthomosaics was implemented and made available as open source.

Sub-project 2 developed methods and tools to estimate the vulnerability of forest stands to winter storms and to identify forest management options to reduce the probability of storm damage. To this end, models for the probability of storm damage were created, adapted and evaluated using various data sources.

In a podcast In “Die Überflieger”, Stefan Reder and Nicole Albert, researchers at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, present their findings and research results on the topic of storm damage in forests in three episodes. They analyse affected forest areas from a bird’s eye view using drones and satellite data. The challenges and opportunities are discussed and the significance of the findings for the management of forest stands and for forest protection are highlighted.