Blaz Klobucar

I am a researcher in the Landscape Governance and Management group at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management in Alnarp. I graduated in forestry at the University of Ljubljana (MSc 2013) and completed my PhD at SLU in 2021, supervised by a Nordic team spanning urban forestry management, governance and remote sensing. In 2018 I spent six months as a guest researcher with the i-Tree development team at the USDA Forest Service in Syracuse, NY. My work combines quantitative remote sensing with the planning and management context in which urban tree data are used.

In my current Formas project I map how urban tree canopy cover has changed in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm from the 1960s to the present, using deep learning applied to historical black-and-white aerial photographs. The project produces city-wide canopy change maps that feed into stakeholder workshops with urban planners and support evidence-based urban forestry policy in Sweden.

I also work with LiDAR-based tree crown segmentation and how three-dimensional tree data can support decisions in spatial planning (Skogh et al., in press, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening). My earlier research, including my PhD, focused on residential urban forests: the socio-ecological factors that shape trees on private residential property, and how their ecosystem services can be assessed.

My research sits at the intersection of remote sensing, urban ecology and planning practice. I aim to develop scalable methods for monitoring urban green infrastructure across time and space, so that cities can see how their urban forests have changed over decades and plan, manage and advocate for them accordingly. A core interest is communication: making remote sensing outputs easy to understand and act on for the practitioners and policymakers who need them.

In the longer term I want to move from canopy cover towards individual trees, combining deep learning with LiDAR, multi- and hyperspectral imagery and citizen science data into living urban tree inventories that update continuously rather than through costly periodic surveys. Applied across Nordic and European cities, such methods could show how urban forest trajectories relate to governance structures, planning traditions and climate adaptation ambitions.

Awarded the following FOMA grants:

• 2022: Monitoring the provision and condition of high-value restorative outdoor environments with remote sensing and Volunteered Geographic Information. 6-month grant. Report (2024, with E. Skärbäck and N. Sang)
• Urban Tree Detection in Historical Aerial Imagery of Sweden. 6-month grant. Report (2024):

Course leader

• Independent project in Landscape Architecture (EX1011), international Bachelor’s programme Forest and Landscape, since spring 2024
• Urban Tree Assessment: Data-Driven Decisions for Urban Forest Management, an open online course (MOOC) on R-based analysis of urban tree inventories, in development and launching January 2027

Guest lecturer and teaching assistant since 2018

• Landskapsförvaltning & Skötsel av grönytor och naturmarker (Landscape management)
• Trädvårdskursen (Tree care)
• Urban Forestry – management of urban forests and trees
• Advanced Digital Landscape Analysis with GIS (ADLA)

• Philosophy and Ethics in Science course
• Course in Grading and Assessment
• Teaching in Higher Education, basic course
• Doctoral co-supervision course

• RTV Slovenija, Ugriznimo znanost (2026): featured in the episode Drevesa v mestu (Trees in the city)
• N1 Slovenija (April 2022): interview “Vsakič, ko v mestu pogledate skozi okno, bi morali videti vsaj tri drevesa” (Every time you look out of a window in the city, you should see at least three trees)