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Drone docks for automated forest phenology monitoring

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 7, page 85 (2026)Cite this article

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Seasonal phenological rhythms — leaf unfolding and falling — regulate the carbon, water and energy cycles of forests, and affect the stability of forest ecosystem structure and function. Monitoring forest phenology is vital but also challenging: satellites offer global monitoring but suffer from low temporal resolution and cloud interference; near-surface cameras capture fine-scale changes but lack the spatial coverage to reflect landscape heterogeneity. Drone-based phenology monitoring has started to bridge these gaps, but drone use is severely constrained by limited battery capacity, high operational and labour costs, and difficulty of access in forested terrain.

A drone dock installed in Northeast China will be used to continuously monitor the phenology of a mixed broadleaved-Korean pine forest, to explore how phenological diversity and asynchrony contribute to the resilience and stability of forest communities. Additionally, bridging between drone docks with satellites can provide a powerful phenological monitoring system from individual trees to global scales. In the future, a global drone-dock monitoring network might offer insights into how forest ecosystems respond and adapt to climate change.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks A. Menzel and W. Dai for providing guidance and constructive suggestions during the preparation of this work, and also thanks K. Ma, G. Jin and S. Wang for their comments. This work was supported by funding from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2023M740564), Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province of China (TD2023C006), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2572022DS13).

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  1. School of Forestry, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China

    Yanwei Cong

  2. Northeast Asia Biodiversity Research Center, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China

    Yanwei Cong

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  1. Yanwei Cong
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Correspondence to Yanwei Cong.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Cite this article

Cong, Y. Drone docks for automated forest phenology monitoring. Nat Rev Earth Environ 7, 85 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-026-00759-1

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