The RMK carried out an observation to assess the situation in forested areas where major storm damage has been reported in recent months.

"The aim was to make a small flight over Southeastern Estonia and get a sense of the scale of the damage caused by the storm winds in the first half of July. We roughly know the trajectory of the storm winds, but we are trying to find out the extent of the damage to the forests caused by those storm winds," explained Tanel Täheste, deputy manager of the RMK's south-eastern region.

Recently, strong winds ripped through a forest near Võru, where there are some sports and health trails. However, they did not cause as much as last year's storms.

"We've had stormy days like this twice now in the summer, but fortunately we haven't had the devastating effects of last year. We've had some localized gusts and whirlwinds which have brought a tree down in seconds," said Erki Sok, head of the Võru County Forestry Cooperative.

While the storm damage still needs to be found using more traditional surveying methods, the RMK has enlisted the help of artificial intelligence (A.I.) to identify the areas of forest to which the spruce bark beetle has spread. 

"We've trained the artificial intelligence to understand what a withered spruce looks like, and we're getting pretty good help from it, but we can't quite find all the storm damage using the artificial intelligence just yet. Finding the damage from a helicopter is a very rational use of time, so that after a couple of hours of flight we have about as much information as our own staff could do in a couple of weeks with ten people," said Täheste.

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