Driving smart forestry through data: Sitowise and Aguiar Floresta partnership

Sitowise, together with Aguiar Floresta in Portugal, conducted a collaborative field validation study in areas near Vila Pouca to assess the accuracy of satellite-based AI analytics. The project compared Smartlas map insights with systematic real-world field observations.

Reforestation is rapidly evolving from a manual, field-driven activity into a data-enabled strategic process. For forestry organizations across Southern Europe, smart digital maps provide a powerful foundation for improving survival rates, securing funding eligibility and protecting long-term forest asset value.

Using Smartlas, smart maps service, you can enable continuous monitoring of forests at scale. Satellite-based analytics can track vegetation recovery, detect failed planting zones, and identify stress caused by drought, pests, or soil degradation. Due to recent climate change caused weather events in the country, there are increasing risks for storms and forest fires. Through satellite monitoring these risks can be better managed, enabling proactive management decisions rather than reactive interventions.

To validate the AI-based maps, forestry teams conducted structured site visits using Infracontrol Online, Sitowise’s cloud-based infrastructure platform. Through the mobile application, field workers recorded 88 georeferenced sample plots, documenting whether changes had occurred while assessing forest vitality and health status. Each sample was automatically GPS-tagged, with photographic evidence and observations uploaded to a centralized database in real time.

The field results were then directly compared to Smartlas Sentinel-2-based AI maps. The study demonstrated approximately 80% accuracy in change detection and 80% accuracy in vitality assessment. These findings align with earlier validation studies conducted by Sitowise together with the Finnish Forest Centre in Finland, which also showed over 80% accuracy in change detection.

Digital solutions like Smartlas and Infracontrol Online enable forestry organizations to strengthen reforestation planning, monitor forest growth and damages systematically while streamlining compliance reporting for funding.

Beyond technical validation, this collaboration reinforced trust between the organizations, opened discussions for new commercial opportunities and provided valuable insight for the continued development of Sitowise’s digital forestry solutions.