Omanos launched the space-enabled ground-truthing for peatland and forestry restoration programme in 2023, with support from Scottish Enterprise’s Net Zero funding stream. Aimed at improving low carbon ground data collection capabilities for peatland and forestry restoration, this work has advanced the standardisation of ground-truth data collection and delivery for ecological studies and land use management.
Our Community-Sourced Intelligence for Earth Observation (CSI-EO) service was expanded to support ecological ground-truthing for land management and support of restoration programmes.
In these images from our app, green shows planting opportunity for new woodland and orange shows peatland restoration targets.
This work complemented a parallel-track programme to design a suite of remote sensing powered solutions for the monitoring and planning of restoration of natural assets in the Scottish Highlands, tendered by the Cairngorms National Park Authority. Through the Net Zero programme, we developed a standardised methodology for ground-truthing peatland and new forests to support restoration programmes in the Cairngorms. This incorporated community data collection and interviews to aid estate managers in understanding community use of their lands and the social value of the estates to communities. We conducted fieldwork in priority areas identified by estate management teams, with ground data then used to assess the conditions and restoration potential of the target sites.
The formalisation of geospatial ground data collection is a key component of green recovery across the Scottish Highlands.
