Rezatec EO Ground-truthing

Rezatec produced a map of ash and oak woodland with an overlay indicating the stress level of blocks of ash and oak woodland. A small amount of quality assurance has been undertaken to validate the map.

This comprised:

 A Defra desk-based project using FC photos of ash and oak woodland collected during aerial surveillance to ascertain whether the images aligned with the species level indicated in the Rezatec map.

 Feedback from Kew Gardens.

The QA indicated that (1) oak mapping appeared to have a high level of accuracy (2) ash mapping appeared to be less accurate which could be due to ash dieback impacting the categorisation of trees or could be an issue with the algorithms underlying the mapping.

Aims of project:

There is no justification for taking forward further work on the map unless we have a good sense of how accurate it is, in terms of both species and stress categorisation.

The map can be used on a smartphone, so it is proposed we fund Fera to coordinate the ground-truthing and subcontract the Tree Council to provide the boots on the ground and assess the map against the seen reality.