The spatial prediction of growing stock volume is one of the most frequent application of remote sensing for supporting the sustainable management of forest ecosystems. For such a purpose data from active or passive sensors are used as predictor variables in combination with measures taken in the field in sampling plots.

In this paper we have explored the capabilities of Sentinel-2 the new ESA satellite to predict growing stock volume in two different forest in Italy charactherized by different forest types, one in Lazio and one in Tuscany.

The results underline that Sentinel-2 images are suitable for predicting growing stock volume obtaining good performances that are comparable with Landsat.

The article is available on line at this link https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2017.11.013

Cite this article as:

Matteo Mura, Francesca Bottalico, Francesca Giannetti, Remo Bertani, Raffaello Giannini, Marco Mancini, Simone Orlandini, Davide Travaglini, Gherardo Chirici. (2018) Exploiting the capabilities of the Sentinel-2 multi spectral instrument for predicting growing stock volume in forest ecosystems. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, Volume 66, 2018, Pages 126-134, ISSN 0303-2434, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2017.11.013.