ML4HealthyForest:
Smarter Decisions for More Productive and Sustainable Forests

Forest owners and forestry professionals in Latvia and Estonia can now benefit from a new generation of AI-powered forest management services developed through the EstLat Programme project ML4HealthyForest.

Project partners SIA Baltic Satellite Service (BSS) and OÜ Eeway have successfully developed and deployed an innovative forestry solution that combines artificial intelligence, Earth Observation technologies, nationwide LiDAR datasets, forest inventory information, and forest growth models into a fully automated forest management decision-support system.

The jointly developed solution is now operationally available countrywide:

· Latvia: integrated into the GeoHub forest monitoring platform (https://app.geohub.net/apps/) ;

· Estonia: integrated into the ForestMan platform (https://www.forestman.eu).

More Than Thinning Recommendations

While the service provides automated thinning recommendations to support sustainable forest management, its capabilities extend far beyond that.

Forest owners can now access valuable forest inventory information without the need for extensive field surveys, including:

Dominant tree species;
Tree height;
Basal area;
Timber volume estimates;
Additional stand-level forest indicators derived from remote sensing and AI models.

These data products help forest owners better understand the condition and productivity of their forests, support management planning, identify priority areas for intervention, and improve long-term decision-making.

From Data to Actionable Forest Intelligence

The ML4HealthyForest project demonstrates how modern technologies can transform forest management by:

Automating the assessment of thinning needs;
Providing objective, data-driven forest management recommendations;
Reducing the time and costs associated with traditional inventory methods;
Supporting sustainable and climate-smart forestry practices;
Enabling large-scale forest monitoring across entire countries.

The developed services process satellite data, airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) information, and forest inventory datasets through advanced machine learning models, generating reliable forest information at a scale that was previously difficult and costly to achieve.

Tested with Forestry Professionals

An important contribution to the validation of the service in Latvia was provided by SIA Rīgas Meži (Riga Forests), which actively participated in testing and evaluating the developed solutions. Their practical expertise helped assess the quality of the results and identify potential operational applications within real-world forest management workflows.

A Step Forward for Digital Forestry

The successful deployment of ML4HealthyForest demonstrates the strong potential of artificial intelligence and Earth Observation technologies to improve operational efficiency, support sustainable forest management, and strengthen the competitiveness of the forestry sector across the Baltic region and beyond.

As forest owners face increasing challenges related to climate change, forest health, and economic sustainability, access to timely and reliable information becomes more important than ever. ML4HealthyForest provides exactly that: practical, scalable, and easy-to-use forest intelligence for better decisions.

Interested in Seeing the Results for Your Forest?

If you are interested in forest monitoring and AI-powered forestry services, we invite you to get in touch. We are currently offering forest analysis free of charge until the end of this year, allowing forest owners and managers to explore the benefits of the ML4HealthyForest service on their own forest properties.