Deadtrees.earth – From drones to AI: cross-border teaching on digital forest monitoring

Tree mortality in Central Europe is accelerating under climate change. Droughts, heatwaves, and bark beetle outbreaks threaten biodiversity, carbon storage, and ecosystem services. Traditional field surveys are too slow and limited to capture these rapid shifts.

At the same time, new technologies are transforming forest monitoring. Small drones can map large areas within hours, capturing high-resolution images. Photogrammetry converts these images into georeferenced orthomosaics where even single dead trees are visible. Artificial intelligence (AI) then detects mortality patterns at scale, identifying subtle spectral and structural cues faster and more accurately than human observers. Together, these tools open a new era of digital forest monitoring.

Yet, access to these innovations remains limited: drone operations, data processing, and AI all require specialized skills and resources. To bridge this gap, we created deadtrees.earth, an open platform that integrates the entire pipeline. Users can upload drone imagery, generate orthomosaics, run AI-based mortality detection, visualize results, and download data. Importantly, they can correct false predictions, improving the AI continuously. This enables students, researchers, and practitioners to engage directly with cutting-edge forest monitoring.