DEFID2 development : share your data!

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission is launching a research initiative that aims to develop the Database of European Forest Insect & Disease Disturbances (DEFID2).
Forest pests and pathogens are an increasing concern in Europe, but a comprehensive assessment of their occurrence is still lacking. To fill this knowledge gap, the JRC is launching a collaborative initiative to create a spatio-temporal database of the occurrence and damages they have caused to European forests since 1981. The collection will include damaged areas derived from forest surveys and remote sensing data analysis.
The JRC invites researchers, forest services, and forest owners from across Europe engaged in mapping such forest disturbances to contribute and share their observations into DEFID2, which will be harmonized and curated by the JRC.
DEFID2 will be open-access, with the aim to improve our capacity to observe, understand, and predict biotic forest disturbances and quantify their impact on forest ecosystems. Results of the data collection will be published in a high-profile scientific journal and coauthorship will be offered to all data providers. IEFC plans to promote data collected through the application of participatory science to report damage observed in forests with Silvalert, although the objective of this study is more oriented towards data in which pathogens are certified by experts.
In case you are willing to share your data with them, please contact JRC-DEFID2@ec.europa.eu.

Author: The DEFID2 team

Coordinators:
Giovanni Forzieri, Bernd Eckhardt, Pieter Beck and Alessandro Cescatti (European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy)

Advisory board:
Henrik Hartmann, Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena, Germany
Andrea Battisti, University of Padova, Italy
Constantin Nistor, University of Bucharest, Romania