Aristotle University of Thessaloniki has completed Greece's first national satellite-based forest monitoring system, a p...

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki has completed Greece's first national satellite-based forest monitoring system, a project that tracks the condition of Greek forests from space using high-resolution imagery at 3-meter clarity, far sharper than the 10-20 meters offered by standard European satellites. The system was developed under the SAT4FOREST project, which ran from August 2024 through this month, June 2026. It was built in coordination with the Hellenic Space Center and the European Space Agency, and is funded through Greece's Recovery and Resilience Fund. Professor Ioannis Gitas, director of the Laboratory of Forest Management and Remote Sensing at AUTH and the project's scientific lead, told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency that simulation data from European satellites were used to test whether the services developed could be applied to data from Greek satellites. A second phase is now expected to use actual data streaming in from Greece's own microsatellites, which have already begun launching into orbit, with that data to become available to all service developers within the year. The system can update forest data at least twice a year, or more frequently when needed. Greek forests cover roughly a fifth of the country's land area, and fire risk mapping is one of the primary applications the platform was built to support. The outputs feed directly into Greece's Central Forestry Service, regional forest directorates, the Ministry of Environment and Energy, and the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection. Research institutes, universities, and private operators building downstream products like wildfire spread simulations and hazard maps will also have access. The platform is part of Greece's national microsatellite program under the Ministry of Digital Governance, a broader push to reduce the country's dependence on foreign satellite infrastructure for monitoring its own territory. #Greece #Technology #ForestMonitoring