FORSAID’s latest ForestHealth podcast explores innovations in forest pest management

The official FORSAID podcast, Forest Health, returned with a second episode in early July 2026. Hosted by the project's manager Andree Cappellari (University of Padua), the new edition features a panel of multidisciplinary experts from across the project’s consortium - Stéphanie Horion from the University of Copenhagen, Matej Štefančič from EFOS and Christian Pylatiuk from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). All gathered to discuss their work on innovative technological solutions for monitoring forest pests across Europe.

The topic is a reflection of a driving theme within FORSAID - early detection is critical to effective intervention as forests face increasing pressure from invasive pests. Consequently, one of the project's main objectives is the development and integration of advanced monitoring tools for forest pest surveillance. 

When asked about one of the avenues pursued in this regard, namely remote sensing, Ms. Horion laid out how satellite technology, despite operating at a scale in which individual insects cannot be discerned, is being used to monitor forest disease symptoms across large areas from space. 

The focus then shifted to automated smart traps as Mr. Štefančič made a compelling argument explaining why the quality, timing and usability of pest monitoring data are far more crucial than the quantity when developing such novel trapping devices.

A continuation of the conversation around efficient identification was provided by Mr. Pylatiuk and his introduction to the Entomoscope - a portable, DIY photomicroscope that is able to automatically identify common pest species using AI image recognition.

Bringing everything together, Andree asked all three guests to reflect on the bigger picture. In that sense, their thoughts were sampled on why effective forest pest management requires consistent, comprehensive innovation. A point of convergence in their responses was that solutions are not to be developed in isolation from one another, but emerge as part of a single operational framework where complementarity is a core principle. As they pointed out, a paradigm of this kind is precisely what FORSAID is working towards in pursuit of greater resilience against future pest outbreaks across Europe’s forests. 

Stream the full episode below. You can also find the ForestHealth podcast on Spotify, SoundCloud and YouTube.