My name is Francesco CHIANUCCI. I am a Senior Researcher working in Italy, at the National Forestry Research Centre (CREA-FL). Since 2010, I focused my research on digital canopy photographic applications for tree and forest monitoring.
Why canopy photography
I was very fascinated by the use of digital photography in canopy monitoring. At the very beginning of my study, hemispherical photography was the predominantly used tool in canopy photography monitoring, with about half-a-century of applications in forestry.
In my view, digital photography holds strong potential in canopy research, as
it is a cheap and standard technology
it is implemented in many general purpose devices such as smartphones, unmanned aerial vehicles, webcam, trail and wildlife cameras.
the digital image format is a permanent record and it is very suitable for open access software and programming language manipulations.
For these reasons, in my research I put most efforts to expand the range of applications and digital photographic approaches to monitoring plant canopies. My research included monitoring forest canopies and agricultural crops, isolated and urban trees, use of unmanned aerial vehicles and repeated photographs for phenological applications.
Full list of my studies can be found on my ORCID page.