Johan Fransson

Professor

Department of Forestry and Wood Technology Faculty of Technology

johan.fransson@lnu.se

+46 470-76 70 42

+46 70-660 86 97

Teaching

I teach courses related to the subject area Digitalisation of forestry, which includes Forest remote sensing, Forest planning and GIS at BSc and MSc level as well as independent courses.

Commissions

Member of the steering committee, Department of Forestry and Wood Technology, LNU, August 2022 –
Research coordinator in Linnaeus University Centre for Data Intensive Sciences and Applications (DISA), January 2022 –
Member of the panel for Svenska Rymdforskares Samarbetsgrupp (SRS), March 2019 –
Member of the Science Advisory Panel of the ALOS Kyoto & Carbon Initiative, July 2004 –
Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (IEEE-GRSS), March 2002 – April 2012 (Member), May 2012 –

My research groups

My ongoing research projects

My completed research projects

Project: Identifying retained habitat using current and future laser and optical data The project develops a remote sensing-based tool to identify and characterise retained habitat structures in…

Publications

Article in journal (Refereed)

Soomro, S., Zarins, J., Fransson, J.E. (2026). Transfer of forest attribute models from Sweden to Latvia using a DeepLab-XGBoost MetaPredictor. Ecological Informatics. 95.
Status: Published
Noumonvi, K.D., Nilsson, M.B., Kljun, N., Ratcliffe, J.L., Oquist, M.G., et al. (2026). Data-driven modelling of methane fluxes across a mire complex based on replicated eddy covariance measurements and spatially-resolved driver information. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 378.
Status: Published
Björnberg, D., Ericsson, M., Lindeberg, J., Löwe, W., Nordqvist, J., et al. (2026). Improving national forest attribute maps of Sweden with machine learning. Science of Remote Sensing. 13.
Status: Published
Topgul, S.N., Sertel, E., Aksoy, S., Unsalan, C., Fransson, J. (2025). VHRTrees : a new benchmark dataset for tree detection in satellite imagery and performance evaluation with YOLO-based models. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. 7.
Status: Published
Noumonvi, K.D., Nilsson, M.B., Ratcliffe, J.L., Oquist, M.G., Kljun, N., et al. (2025). Variations in Ecosystem-Scale Methane Fluxes Across a Boreal Mire Complex Assessed by a Network of Flux Towers. Global Change Biology. 31 (5).
Status: Published
Chi, J., Klosterhalfen, A., Nilsson, M.B., Laudon, H., Wallerman, J., et al. (2025). A managed boreal forest landscape in northern Sweden is a persistent net carbon sink despite large inter-annual weather anomalies. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 373.
Status: Published
Gundermann, N., Löwe, W., Fransson, J., Olofsson, E., Wehrenpfennig, A. (2024). Object Identification in Land Parcels Using a Machine Learning Approach. Remote Sensing. 16 (7).
Status: Published
Fjeld, D., Persson, M., Fransson, J., Bjerketvedt, J., Brathen, M. (2024). Modelling forest road trafficability with satellite-based soil moisture variables. International Journal of Forest Engineering. 35 (1). 93-104.
Status: Published
Martinez-Garcia, E., Nilsson, M.B., Laudon, H., Lundmark, T., Fransson, J., et al. (2024). Drought response of the boreal forest carbon sink is driven by understorey-tree composition. Nature Geoscience. 17. 197-204.
Status: Published
Doeweler, F., Fransson, J., Bader, M.K. (2024). Linking High-Resolution UAV-Based Remote Sensing Data to Long-Term Vegetation Sampling : A Novel Workflow to Study Slow Ecotone Dynamics. Remote Sensing. 16 (5).
Status: Published
Peichl, M., Martinez-Garcia, E., Fransson, J., Wallerman, J., Laudon, H., et al. (2023). Landscape-variability of the carbon balance across managed boreal forests. Global Change Biology. 29 (4). 1119-1132.
Status: Published
Peichl, M., Martinez-Garcia, E., Fransson, J., Wallerman, J., Laudon, H., et al. (2023). On the uncertainty in estimates of the carbon balance recovery time after forest clear-cutting. Global Change Biology. 29 (15). e1-e3.
Status: Published
Huuva, I., Wallerman, J., Fransson, J., Persson, H.J. (2023). Prediction of Site Index and Age Using Time Series of TanDEM-X Phase Heights. Remote Sensing. 15 (17).
Status: Published
Martinez-Garcia, E., Nilsson, M.B., Laudon, H., Lundmark, T., Fransson, J., et al. (2022). Overstory dynamics regulate the spatial variability in forest-floor CO₂ fluxes across a managed boreal forest landscape. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 318.
Status: Published

Conference paper (Refereed)

Bennet, P.J., Monteith, A.R., Leistner, T., Fransson, J.E., Ulander, L.M. (2025). Relations Between P- To L-Band Radar Tomography and Sub-Daily Tree Water Dynamics in a Boreal Forest. International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). 3579-3583.
Fransson, J.E., Ene, L., Dahy, B., Sengün, E., Aksoy, S., et al. (2025). Segmentation of Single Trees in Boreal Forest Using UAV LiDAR Data. International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). 3629-3632.
Dahy, B., Sengün, E., Witzell, J., Fransson, J. (2025). Mapping Boreal Forest Vitality Using Drone-Based Multispectral Time-Series and Object-Based Classification. International Archives of the Photogrammetry Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ISPRS Archives. 81-86.
Sengün, E., Aksoy, S., Sertel, E., Fransson, J. (2025). Comparative Analysis of YOLOv8 and YOLOv11 on Tree Detection Using UAV RGB and Laser Scanning Data. ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. 173-179.
Boman, G., Dahy, B., Sengün, E., Witzell, J., Fransson, J. (2025). Detecting Root Rot Infected Norway Spruce Trees Using Multispectral and LiDAR UAV Data. International Archives of the Photogrammetry Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ISPRS Archives. 33-38.
Dahy, B., Sengün, E., Aksoy, S., Sertel, E., Reese, H., et al. (2025). Time Series Analysis of Tree Health for Early Forest Damage Detection Using UAV Data. International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). 3551-3554.
Fransson, J., Soomro, S., Holmström, A., Nilsson, M., Salo, J., et al. (2024). ForestMap : The next generation of forest maps - adapting a Nordic success story. .
Fransson, J., Björnberg, D., Holmström, A., Lazo, J.F., Löwe, W., et al. (2024). Applying Machine Learning for Forest Attribute Mapping in Latvia : Sharing Insights from the Swedish Approach. 2024 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. 5320-5323.
Ulander, L.M., Monteith, A.R., Persson, H.J., Fransson, J. (2024). Borealscat-2 : Backscatter Measurements of Forest Water Dynamics. International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). 2332-2335.
Ulander, L.M., Monteith, A.R., Fransson, J. (2023). Development and Initial Evaluation of the Tower-based Borealscat-2 P- and L-Band Tomographic SAR. IGARSS 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium : Pasadena, CA, USA, 2023. 2192-2194.
Aksoy, S., Hasan Al Shwayyat, S.Z., Nur Topgül, Ş., Sertel, E., Ünsalan, C., et al. (2023). Forest Biophysical Parameter Estimation via Machine Learning and Neural Network Approaches. IGARSS 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium : Pasadena, CA, USA, 2023. 2661-2664.
Fransson, J., Sertel, E., Ünsalan, C., Salo, J., Holmström, A., et al. (2023). ForestMap : Mapping Forest Attributes Across the Globe - First Case Study. IGARSS 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. 3395-3397.
Huuva, I., Persson, H.J., Wallerman, J., Ulander, L.M., Fransson, J. (2023). Prediction of Hemi-Boreal Forest Biomass Change Using Alos-2 Palsar-2 L-Band SAR Backscatter. IGARSS 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. 3326-3329.
Huo, L., Lindberg, E., Fransson, J., Persson, H.J. (2022). Comparing spectral differences between healthy and early infested spruce forests caused by bark beetle attacks using satellite images. IGARSS 2022 - 2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, Hybrid Symposium, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 17-21 July, 2022. 7709-7712.
Persson, H.J., Mukhopadhyay, R., Huuva, I., Fransson, J. (2022). Comparison of Boreal Biomass Estimations Using C-and X-Band Polsar. International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Volume 2022-July. 5555-5558.
Huuva, I., Persson, H.J., Wallerman, J., Fransson, J. (2022). Detectability of Silvicultural Treatments in Time Series of Penetration Depth Corrected Tandem-X Phase Heights. International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Volume 2022-July. 5909-5912.

Other (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))

Fransson, J., Elif, S., Ünsalan, C., Jari, S., Holmström, A., et al. (2022). ForestMap : The next generation of forest maps – adapting a Nordic success story across the globe. ForestValue.
Newsletter #10/ ForestValue
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