Field monitoring Field monitoring

The proposed project will be implemented throughout the Polish part of Bialowieża Forest in stands with different species composition and structure. Bialowieża Forest (PB) is one of the largest and mostly preserved forest areas in the lowlands of central and eastern Europe. In addition, it is the area of utmost importance for terrestrial and remote research of facility stands.

To implement the project, there will be collected a representative sample, which allows deducing about the dynamics, history and forecast development of the forest stands. Two types of surface monitoring will be used:

  • ground surfaces for calibration of remote sensing data analysis results – surfaces will be selected subjectively – the objective is to determine the quality of connection the remote sensing data and ground,
  • ground surfaces for calibration of remote sensing data analysis results, but collected by the rules of statistics (objectively) – they allow "extending" sample data over the entire area or isolated fragments.

It is planned to carry out ground surveys on more than 650 surface monitoring of 5 a surface, including:

  • 130 IBL‘s solid surfaces established in 1970-2000, where the research is conducted within every 10-15 years. These permanent sample IBL’s plots are representative for the most important forest communities, natural stands, close to natural stands and developed (in various degrees of development). Sample plots are located on the throughout the Forest. It is planned to measure positions of trees in these surfaces and measure the precision of their funds. These surfaces are chosen subjectively, so their location is irregular.
  • 30 permanent sample plots to supplement the IBL’s data on habitats hardly represented in the material of the monitoring. These are also the areas of IBL, which should be reconstructed in the field and be properly measured.
  • 160 schematically circular surfaces arranged in a grid of rectangles. These surfaces are chosen objectively on the area of Strict Reserve in Białowieża National Park. It is necessary to measure the appropriate surface-fund items and trees on the surfaces, because earlier measurements were done with a low accurate GPS device.
  • About 300 newly found monitoring surfaces. Surfaces will be established on a regular rectangle grid, and cover the entire surface of Forest (preliminary draft of all surfaces shown). During this task, the methodology of setting the surface will be refined. Especially definite will be issues, like values that must be fulfilled to make the surface a randomly selected location (e.g., distance to the border of the forest).

It will be necessary to verify some of the surface areas’ location in order to check what is their actual status. A localization of a large number of permanent monitoring area is a result of the following reasons:

  • complex building stands,
  • very varied species composition, great variety of trees’ age or thickness structure,
  • mosaic of habitats, resulting in large spatial diversity of forests.

The surfaces will be used as points of reference in relation to the remote sensing data. They will be used to calibrate them and to execute the extrapolation of the characteristics on the entire surface of the forest. In the drawing attached to this task a draft deployment of all surfaces that will be used in the project. Irregular distribution of terrestrial surface is guaranteed to capture all the most valuable parts of the forest, regular schedule will allow an analysis of the entire area, with particular attention to the part of nature reserves. The proposed spatial extent of surface provide a clear analysis of the whole area, and also introduce the possibility to compare the results of monitoring for Reserve and other parts of the forest.