GFOI

This activity will design a country-led planning process, in partnership with the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI).   For some time, GFOI has been considering different approaches to identifying country needs for support to operationalize or further improve their National Forest Monitoring Systems (NFMS) and associated emissions Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) procedures. GFOI partners have traditionally worked with countries in a unilateral manner to assess their needs for international support through a range of different approaches. However, GFOI also recognizes the importance of having a common approach to assessing and communicating country needs. This common approach will provide the necessary foundation to ensure the support of the GFOI community is contributing to the operationalization of countries' systems and reduce the risk of overlap or duplication of GFOI activities.   GFOI developed a country needs assessment process which was applied through a series of regional workshops with countries participating in the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. This process systematically identified individual country needs that could then be prioritized and addressed within existing program funding. However, the process raised countries' expectations that their priority gaps could be met with additional support from the GFOI community. Ultimately, inadequate funding to address the identified needs as a common GFOI effort meant the process could not be further refined. The COVID-19 pandemic suddenly changed GFOI's priorities and operations which further delayed the implementation of the initial standard operating procedures for this process.   Through the design of the GFOI CLP, this activity will prioritize the following: The CLP should serve as a capacity building activity, providing training to countries in planning processes and principles that support the ongoing development and operation of their forest monitoring processes in a systematic manner. An output from this training should be a country level planning process which identifies priority activities that they can ideally fulfill themselves or require international support to address. The CLP is a core GFOI activity that serves the needs of all GFOI partners and remains open for their ongoing participation and engagement.   Additionally, the technical expert work on this will: Conduct a review of the existing GFOI Country Needs Assessment procedures and results, as well as that of capacity building partners Conduct extensive consultations with GFOI Leads, Component Managers, tropical countries, and other partners (determined in consultation with the GFOI Office, SilvaCarbon and other capacity building partners) to inform the design of the new CLP activity Work closely with the GFOI Office to ensure the activity accurately reflects the priorities of GFOI and can be implemented as an ongoing activity in future Coordinate with the FAO, the World Bank and other GFOI partners to explore synergies and recommend linkages and efficiencies. Work with the SilvaCarbon Program to recommend linkages and synergies with the SilvaCarbon FY20-25 Strategy and the SilvaCarbon Milestones Tracking Activity. Any other activities identified as necessary that contributes to the quality and completeness of the CLP design.  

Supporting indigenous and other local communities in combatting deforestation.

The SilvaCarbon Global Program will collaborate to develop, refine, and disseminate globally applicable tools, methods, and guidance to support improved forest and landscape carbon monitoring in SilvaCarbon countries. This will include exploring new opportunities to enhance engagement with the GFOI Research and Development Component and other research partners and continuing to support participation of SilvaCarbon-affiliated researchers and program staff in key workshops and technical for a led by the Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) program and others. The Global Program will also collaborate to support applied research and analyses to inform country decisions around forest monitoring tool selection and investments.

Building upon the Regional Climate Fellow capacity building program to promote women's participation in UNFCCC reporting processes further facilitate professional internship and externship experiences and training for select candidates from an over 100- person cohort. Furthermore, GHGMI diploma courses on Carbon Management will be offered to select candidates to expand the cohort of laureates of the program. The Carbon Management diploma program is a self-learning online program, which focuses on the technical analysis of emission mitigation to support companies and countries in reducing their GHG emissions and increasing removals. As part of the completion of the online diploma program, a regional workshop will be organized on select topics dealing with carbon stock estimation, showcasing practical country examples and experiences. Internships and externships will be organized with key government and technical partners to ensure concrete, applied experience as part of the program.

"SilvaCarbon will provide continued capacity-building support for the intensive monitoring sites established in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. These are sites that integrate carbon monitoring methodologies at high temporal and spatial scales to detect changes in the ecosystem and provide data to scale measurements to broader regions. This activity will be carried out in collaboration between the SilvaCarbon and SWAMP programs. Colombia, Ecuador, Peru - To date, with in-country partners, SilvaCarbon (and SWAMP) has set up carbon flux towers, meteorological instrumentation and designed an intensive plot network at three sites in the Andean Amazon. Once fully implemented, these sites will form a transect across the Amazon (linking them with similar sites in Brazil) and provide a space-for time analysis capability. This support is needed to help country counterparts include field data collection, facilitate integration among the sites, and better equip them to progress towards Tier 3 reporting. The Peruvian site has been able to leverage this support to obtain grant funding from the Department of Energy and are working towards securing additional funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). SilvaCarbon will continue to provide training for field work and transfer methodologies that link remote sensing and field data with models in the three countries. These activities will focus on REDD+ landscapes and employ a carbon accounting framework with a special focus on Forest Land remaining Forest Land (FLFL) estimation. Efforts in this area will allow the countries to better understand, monitor, and estimate the effects of different mitigation policies on AFOLU GHG emissions and removals, and assist in their prioritization. SilvaCarbon and SWAMP researchers will continue to provide direct technical assistance in tower maintenance and data collection analysis. "

Collect Earth Online brings a desktop application online. It is a user oriented platform for collecting and analysing earth observation data. Collect Earth Online was developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), SilvaCarbon, NASA-SERVIR, and the Spatial Informatics Group in FY17. New functionality has been incrementally added based on user feedback through a collaborative partnership between SERVIR, FAO, and SilvaCarbon. Building on this partnership, SilvaCarbon has been collaborating with FAO and SERVIR to upgrade and enhance CEO and provide associated training materials in response to requests from SilvaCarbon partners. This productive collaboration has led to significant leveraged funding and resulted in the development of an effective and widely-used platform to improve forest monitoring in countries around the world. During this time, SERVIR has been working to integrate tools built in Google Earth Engine (i.e. monitoring land cover, near real-time fire detection, land cover change detection) into the SEPAL platform developed by FAO. FAO houses CEO and provides support and resources for CEO operating costs. SilvaCarbon, for its part, has been focused on understanding and responding to the needs of SilvaCarbon country partners. SilvaCarbon has worked with country partners to test CEO and has provided regular feedback on suggested enhancements to CEO developers. Based on country feedback, SilvaCarbon has supported the development of CEO training materials and implementation of the new CEO features and enhancements. (Note: This ongoing activity is listed in the FY22 and FY23 work plans for the SilvaCarbon programme. Please communicate with the point of contact listed to find out the status and results of the activity.)

SilvaCarbon will participate in meetings, trainings, and video calls to learn where and how SERVIR Amazonia is working in the region. SilvaCarbon, through USGS, will provide targeted trainings to the development of products using Collect Earth Online, Google Earth Engine and change detection algorithms in conjunction with SERVIR. USGS will organize discussions, forums, and later materials and training to understand how the data generated for monitoring deforestation and degradation is informing decision-making and land use management in countries. This includes focusing on how dataare distributed among institutions in countries, and what role participatory monitoring of communities or regions are playing in land management decision-making. The USFS LAC SilvaCarbon Program will help bridge the gap between product generation and capacity building. This activity (Activity 3.1.B) is a continuation activity from previous years workplans as the FY21 workplan had indicated ongoing engagement on this topic.

Paraguay - SilvaCarbon will provide technical assistance through emails, video meetings, and in-person meetings to verify estimates of Chaco deforestation. SilvaCarbon will also support the Ministry of Environment (MADES) to build a roadmap to gaining real-time access to satellite imagery and having trained individuals who can quickly identify problem areas.Colombia - SilvaCarbon technical experts will facilitate working meetings on IDEAM's early alert system to introduce law enforcement to the tool and its uses.Mexico – SilvaCarbon technical experts and the USFS Mexico Program will work with CONAFOR to establish an early warning system in the forest sector. This activity includes leveraged funds from the USFS Mexico Program.

SilvaCarbon has been providing both in-person trainings and remote technical assistance on advanced image processing and statistical analysis that targets specific REDD+ needs. This activity is a continuation activity from previous years' workplans as the FY21 workplan had indicated ongoing support on this topic.

Working with the GFOI Registry of Tools to develop a database of available support for REDD+ MRV including relevant datasets/products, methods/tools and platforms. The database will also highlight the CALM level of maturity as assessed through GFOI's criteria to consistently assess levels of maturity approach.

SilvaCarbon countries have received training in a variety of tools for measurement, reporting and verification (MRV). Feedback received indicates that a user-friendly, consolidated and annotated decision support tool would benefit counterparts as a first step in evaluating and understanding some of the options available. It will include an evaluation matrix to help stakeholders understand the limitations and benefits of each software option and the technical capacity needed. This tool would complement the comprehensive MDG and REDDcompass. The SilvaCarbon programme, in consultation with local counterparts and REDDcompass training facilitators, will prepare this list. It will then be shared with partners for their use and distribution. Note: the reported SilvaCarbon countries for this activity are Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gabon, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam. (Note: This activity is listed in the FY18 work plan for the SilvaCarbon programme. Please communicate with the point of contact listed to find out the status and results of the activity.)

SilvaCarbon countries have received training in a variety of tools for measurement, reporting and verification (MRV). Feedback received indicates that a user-friendly, consolidated and annotated decision support tool would benefit counterparts as a first step in evaluating and understanding some of the options available. It will include an evaluation matrix to help stakeholders understand the limitations and benefits of each software option and the technical capacity needed. This tool would complement the comprehensive MDG and REDDcompass. The SilvaCarbon programme, in consultation with local counterparts and REDDcompass training facilitators, will prepare this list. It will then be shared with partners for their use and distribution. Note: the reported SilvaCarbon countries for this activity are Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gabon, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam. (Note: This activity is listed in the FY18 work plan for the SilvaCarbon programme. Please communicate with the point of contact listed to find out the status and results of the activity.)

SilvaCarbon will continue to work with host country partners throughout the LAC region to improve National Forest Inventories (NFIs) so they are statistically robust and integrate both country and regional level information needs. This activity (Activity 1.1.A) is a continuation activity from previous years' workplans as there is room for continual improvement of the national forest inventories and the FY21 workplan had indicated ongoing support on this topic. SilvaCarbon direct technical assistance to host country partners on their NFIs has primarily focused and will continue to focus around the following topic areas:• Honduras, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador - Designing, implementing, and incorporating soil and mangrove/wetland inventories into the National Forest Inventory;• Honduras, Peru, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico - Data processing and statistical data analysis;• Honduras, Peru, Guatemala, Costa Rica - Adoption of SilvaMetricus tool for field collection (Android version) and data analysis;• Colombia, Paraguay, Ecuador - Inventory design;• Honduras, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico - Development of tableaus or story-maps to present and analyze data; and• Peru, Ecuador - Incorporation of socio-economic data into NFIs.

SilvaCarbon has guided countries in the development and use of early warning systems based on satellite information to monitor deforestation, degradation, and land use change in general. These systems have been proved beneficial in many countries to introduce rapid action and law enforcement. Patterns of deforestation detected from space varies based on drivers of deforestation and uses and applications of early warning systems vary by country. USGS SilvaCarbon will document the practical and technical aspects to consider while building an early warning system, and the necessary steps to institutionalize these systems across multiple users in countries. This activity builds on previous SilvaCarbon early warning system work.

USFS, through the LAC SilvaCarbon Program, provides trainings, workshops, and study tours on technical areas related to forest carbon and MRV. Counterparts in Central and South America working on forest inventories, remote sensing, forest carbon, intensive monitoring sites and other areas will be invited to participate in regional activities, including, but not limited to, the annual Belowground Carbon Measurement study tour in Michigan, among others. Support will also include short- to medium-term technical visits to relevant research institutions and/or USFS units in the United States by Andean Amazon host country partners. This ongoing support will strengthen and contribute to the community and network of forest and terrestrial carbon technical experts. The SilvaCarbon program has successfully developed long-term partnerships in all SilvaCarbon countries in the region. However, moving forward, we would like to develop stronger partnerships in Belize, Chile, and SERVIR countries, such as Guyana, Suriname, and Brazil, as we have had numerous requests over the years for engagement and collaboration in these countries. In an effort to leverage these advances in Latin America and expand to other countries in the region and promote further South-South collaboration, SilvaCarbon will engage countries in the region by inviting relevant actors to participate in SilvaCarbon and other activities.

The Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) of the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC, 2016: Article 13) aims to provide clear understanding of climate change action, including tracking of progress towards achieving countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs). For the Asia-Pacific region, the agriculture and land use sector bears significant importance, contributing to around 40 percent of global emissions from the AFOLU sector.In FY21, several countries in the region submitted their updated NDCs or are currently preparing them for submission. To review the progress with integrating AFOLU sector data and discuss the main challenges with data harmonization, quality assurance, and transparency, SilvaCarbon conducted a review of the updated NDCs. The review will be finalized at the start of FY22, and SilvaCarbon will collaborate with national UNFCCC and REDD+ reporting entities, FAO, and USAID Missions to convene a webinar for countries to share updates and discuss emerging priorities and challenges for ETF reporting.

Exchanges between environmental producuters related to forest law enforcement

Honduras -– ICF/Honduras requested constant, continued support from SilvaCarbon to assist in revising their FREL. Honduras recently submitted their second FREL. After review by the technical experts, Honduras wishes to modify their recent submission to provide updated information. SilvaCarbon has supported the calculation of the country's emissions factors and forest reference emissions levels (FRELs) over the past few years. Honduras had new emissions factors calculated from all forest inventory cycles along with country-specific mangrove emissions factors developed from an inventory intensification campaign, and these emissions factors will be included in current and future updates to Honduras' FREL document. Colombia - SilvaCarbon will continue to develop their prototype reporting system, SEPAC, and has requested additional support on this initiative. IDEAM and the SilvaCarbon team have discussed support needed and progress to date on the development of the SEPAC modeling platform to enhance IDEAM's capacities to monitor and report greenhouse gas inventory (GHGi), particularly on forest plantations and other areas in the Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector. SilvaCarbon has facilitated a technical review on the enteric fermentation component of SEPAC by a group of scientists and software development experts on GHG emissions reporting. Through this review, IDEAM's technical team received feedback on a variety of issues, ranging from how to improve the efficiency of their code to calculate GHG emissions for different livestock species/categories to best practices on data management and storage, as well as on security issues. Suggestions have been made on how to prevent potential misused /unauthorized modifications of the modules/input data available at IDEAM's GitHub. Future work will include the implementation of the suggested changes, as well as training of personnel appointed by IDEAM on the design of other components of the SEPAC system. Peru, Paraguay, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala - SilvaCarbon will provide technical assistance as needed as they prepare/revise their FRELs, BURS, and other reports. Peru recently submitted their second FREL. After revision by the technical experts, Peru wishes to modify their submission.

  The overriding objective is to eliminate supply chain deforestation and catalyse ecosystem restoration through a knowledge and collective action partnership for wide-scale adoption of geospatial data, technology and MRV approaches as public goods.  

Maintaining an active dialogue with key actors to revise a list of priority research topics for GFOI. Current priority topics can be found here: http://www.gofcgold.wur.nl/documents/GFOI/GFOI_RD_Priorities_2019.pdf. Depending on funding availabiltiy, these topics will be addressed as part of GFOI's R&D Component activities.

SilvaCarbon has been collaborating with FAO and SERVIR to support the use of remote sensing tools for planning and monitoring forest restoration. Since 2020, the collaboration focused on developing a tool that can help identify and prioritize restoration locations, with the help from researchers at Peking University and Duke University. The se.plan tool is developed in SEPAL and combines ecological data on forest restoration with socio-economic data on its benefits, costs and risks. Several countries in the Mekong region have been involved in the tool design and development, and in FY21 Cambodia, Lao PDR and Vietnam started testing the tool in two priority landscapes. To continue building on this momentum, in FY22 we propose sharing the findings from the Mekong region through a regional webinar and initiating similar pilots across the Asia-Pacific. Possible new pilots could be in the Philippines or the Pacific Islands region. In addition, in FY22, we propose to expand the use of SEPAL for monitoring the impacts of forest restoration. This will include 2 tailored trainings (online) and practical testing at specific landscapes.

"The currently available data sets on forest and land cover change in many developing countries are highly uncertain, and therefore constrain efficient and effective implementation of pay-for-performance mechanisms including Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+). In addition, high-precision, high-resolution forest maps are a precondition for meaningful engagement in trusted private-sector initiatives. Different tools are being independently developed by different institutions to address country needs in this area. These include tools such as Collect Earth Online (developed through collaboration with SilvaCarbon, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, SERVIR and others), which are now able to visualize and collect data and land change generated in other tools such as LANDTRENDER and TimeSync. At the same time, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) has developed crowdsourcing land cover visualization and validation platforms such as geo-wiki, as well as an expert-based land cover validation tool called laco-wiki. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have developed platforms for remote-sensing sampling, and IIASA is currently developing the FotoQuest go and FRA Quest tools for ground-based validation, as well as tools to make use of Google Streetview. Tools based on machine learning (e.g. SEPAL, developed by FAO), or platforms that host algorithms for remote-sensing analysis (e.g. Google Earth Engine or GEE) that also include data collection for both area estimation and validation needs, must be sampled as optimally spatially distributed. BU and IIASA have developed sampling tools and protocols. However, these tools and associated activities are largely uncoordinated and are being developed partly in parallel. To address this concern, SilvaCarbon plans to host a targeted workshop designed to convene key programme partners in order to explore possible ways in which these tools might be linked, coupled, and eventually integrated into one land-information system."

The third GFOI Capacity building summit was planned to be held in Zambia during 2022. The overarching goal of this summit is to encourage more effective international cooperation in capacity development on forest monitoring and to enhance methods of training and knowledge transfer that ultimately improve the effectiveness of GFOI partners’ capacity building techniques.

SilvaCarbon will continue its active engagement in the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) research and development component while exploring new opportunities to enhance synergies between GFOI and SilvaCarbon research initiatives. The SilvaCarbon programme will continue to support the participation of SilvaCarbon-funded researchers and programme staff in GFOI research and development workshops led by the Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) programme. While all of the areas of focus have not been defined, to allow for flexibility, some potential areas for continued work are accuracy assessments/uncertainty and forest landscape restoration monitoring. (Note: This activity is listed in the FY18 work plan for the SilvaCarbon programme. Please communicate with the point of contact listed to find out the status and results of the activity.)

SilvaCarbon will maintain its ongoing efforts to facilitate connections between developing countries and the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) Space Data Coordination Group (SDCG) with the objective of further linking the users of Earth Observation data with planners. The global programme will continue to sponsor representatives of developing countries to attend SDCG meetings to discuss their data-acquisition plans for their national forest monitoring system (NFMS) (16 countries have been sponsored to date). It will also continue to support countries' acquisition of commercial data through combined proposals to data providers, such as a past proposal granted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and Colombia to use the TanDEM-X satellite in ten deforestation "hot spots". The United States Geological Survey (USGS), based on agreement with the European Space Agency, will archive, process and deliver Landsat data, including Sentinel-1/2 data. In addition, SilvaCarbon will continue funding the development of tools produced by CEOS, such as the CEOS Visualization Environment (COVE) tool, which allows users to search satellite missions and generate reports of all available space data for forest monitoring. Finally, SilvaCarbon will support the provision of analysis-ready data to country partners who express a need for this data. (Note: This activity is listed in the FY18 work plan for the SilvaCarbon programme. Please communicate with the point of contact listed to find out the status and results of the activity.)

Under the Central African Forest Initative (CAFI) project, the Gabonese government through the Gabonese Space Agency (AGEOS) will set up a National Observatory System for Natural and Forest Resources (SNORNF) and a National Land Use System. AGEOS has identified the area of remote sensing-based biomass mapping and GHG accounting as key sectors where technical assistance is required for setting up the SNORNF.The objective of this activity is to apply RADAR imagery to determine Above-ground biomass (AGB) and emission factors (EF) for specific forest types and land cover categories hence increasing the accuracy of estimates of GHG emissions/removals in the land sector. Generally, Emission Factors (EF) applied for the determination of GHG estimates in the land sector are based on National Forest Inventory (NFI) data. The NFI data do not have sufficient sample plots on all key forest types and land cover/use categories to enable the determination of statistically robust estimates of EF for all key land use/cover classes.The information developed from the interpretation of RADAR imagery will provide disaggregated emission factors for specific forest types therefore enabling the estimation of GHG emissions/removals at a higher Tier level.

EUROCLIMA+ is a programme funded by the European Union and co-financed by the German federal government through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), as well as by the governments of France and Spain through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation. The Programme's mission is to reduce the impact of climate change and its effects in 18 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, promoting mitigation, adaptation, resilience and climate investment. It is implemented according to the spirit of “Team Europe" under the synergistic work of seven agencies. One of the thematic sectors is "Forest, Biodiversity and Ecosystems". New actions in this topic are defined in the so called "Country dialogues" with the partner countries.

The Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA) support facility (SF) is developing a baseline of existing measurement, reporting and verification (MRV)-related support interventions and mechanisms, experiences and best practices, and methodological tools and training materials. The baseline will focus on requirements and methodologies applicable to non-Annex I Parties, hence including the group of SIDS and LDCs which are the traditional GCCA partner countries.

Global Forest Watch provides an independent source of information on tree cover change globally. Some countries have modified this data to use as part of their MRV systems (e.g. through Silvacarbon), while for others it serves more as an independent point of comparison. FAO, Norway, and others use GFW unofficially to compare to country-submitted data and ask for further clarification on numbers and methods provided by countries.

Global Forest Watch (GFW) provides an independent source of information on tree-cover change globally. Some countries have modified this data to use as part of their measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) systems (e.g. through SilvaCarbon), while for others it serves more as an independent point of comparison. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Norway and other partners use GFW unofficially to compare with country-submitted data and ask for further clarification on numbers and methods provided by countries.

USGS SilvaCarbon has partnered with Google Earth Engine, the World Bank, and McGill University to deliver global workshops in the use of Google Earth Engine. These workshops will review the new features of the Google Earth Engine platform to run a set of algorithms that are free and open to countries and feature at the Open MRV platform of GFOI. Google and McGill will provide one-on-one follow up with countries that want to implement any of these algorithms to help them troubleshoot during the process.

SilvaCarbon will provide opportunities for direct expert assistance to Mexican and Colombian counterparts in CONAFOR and IDEAM, respectively, to produce their FREL with specific focus on activity data and emissions factors. This assistance will focus on using best available data and will facilitate the evolution of MRV systems that move beyond deforestation estimates. SilvaCarbon will work with CONAFOR's and IDEAM's modeling groups to develop estimates of mitigation policies on emissions. This activity (Activity 1.1.G) is a continuation activity from previous years workplans as the FY21 workplan had indicated ongoing support on this topic.While Mexico and Colombia's responses to the requirements of the ISFL program are continuously being modified, recent areas of interest related to direct technical assistance in forest change estimation and forest inventory analysis include the following:• Assess technical support priorities (Colombia)• Review of livestock emission models (Colombia)• Improve nitrous oxide emissions reporting from managed soils (Colombia) and croplands (Mexico)• Improve of land use/land cover change assessment (Colombia)• Technical support priority assessment for livestock sector (Mexico)• Incorporation of emissions from livestock (Mexico) To carry out the proposed work under this activity, SilvaCarbon will facilitate technical missions to each country when travel is permitted and will provide remote assistance in the interim. These missions will be conducted by USFS and external consultants with expertise in GHG modelling and remote sensing to provide targeted assistance. The USFS experts and consultants will also provide ongoing remote assistance in the form of video meetings and email correspondence. If needed, direct technical support may also include visits by country counterparts to key sites in the US, such as research stations, USFS units, or selected universities. This activity was approved in the FY21 work plan. Additional funds are being requested.

In 2022, Cambodia and Lao PDR are planning to implement their new national forest inventories. While each country is at a different stage and has its own specific set of objectives for their NFI, there is a shared interest to improve data analysis and reporting and maximize the use of the NFI data. In close consultation with country partners and other development agencies, it was determined that SilvaCarbon support would be best suited to 1) improve field data collection guidelines, 2) build capacity for NFI data analysis, and 3) improve reporting of NFI results. To achieve this, SilvaCarbon will deliver 1) a series of trainings on field data collection and data analysis QQ/QC (country-specific), 2) technical advice on guidelines and spreadsheets (country-specific), and 3) a sub-regional workshop on NFI data management and reporting. This activity will focus on TOT through increased academia participation in NFI data management and sharing. In addition, Vietnam's experience, lessons, and technical advice will also be shared, contributing to a South-South technical cooperation.

Improved GHG-Emissions Estimates from Burned Biomass

Emission factors have historically been calculated from forest inventory data, or ancillary data. However, the new NASA GEDI is a laser-based instrument that will provide a unique 3D view of Earth's forests, helping to fill in missing information about the important role of forests in the carbon cycle. GEDI provides the first global, high-resolution observations of forest vertical structure. These data have been tested by multiple US scientists to assist with the development of forest inventories and ultimately produce emissions factors for areas that lack sufficient ground-based data. SilvaCarbon will link this science capability with countries having scarce emissions factors data in order to test and record new improved methods. This activity is in support of the global stock-take process to use satellite global products for improving measurement of carbon emissions.

Near-real-time deforestation alert systems are increasingly recognized as important tools for empowering governments and communities to enact timely actions against illegal and unsustainable forest activities and to respond to natural disasters. They also increase transparency by highlighting specific instances of forest loss in key areas, providing vital information to supplement national forest monitoring systems. Many deforestation alert systems, including GLAD alerts, rely on optical sensors that are unable to penetrate cloud cover. This poses significant limitations in cloudy tropical regions where cloud-free observations may be few and far between. The RADD (Radar for Detecting Deforestation) alerts, released by Wageningen University on the Global Forest Watch platform in early 2021 overcome this limitation by making use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, which can penetrate through clouds and provide information about forests independent of weather, season, and location. With previous support from USFS through SilvaCarbon, RADD alerts now detect forest loss across the humid tropics of Asia and Africa, and later this year the Amazon, at 10-meter resolution every 6 to 12 days. In 2022, with continued SilvaCarbon support, the RADD team has been building on previous work to develop an automated pipeline for RADD alerts in a dry forest region, with the final results to be incorporated into Global Forest Watch. (Note: This ongoing activity is listed in the FY22 and FY23 work plans for the SilvaCarbon programme. Please communicate with the point of contact listed to find out the status and results of the activity.)

Fires are a regular occurrence in the forest landscapes; especially along the savanna-forest interface. The impact of these fires on national CO2 balances have not been determined or accounted for in national GHG inventories despite being a potential significant source of emissions. Currently, NCs and BURs do not include these estimates due to lack of information related to burnt areas and burnt biomass. This activity will assess the area extent of burnt biomass and estimate the associated GHG emissions. The estimates will be reported in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector in National Communications (NCs)/Biennial Update Reports (BURs).

A needs assessment based on the REDDcompass platform has been undertaken. During 2018-2019, a full package of an innovative capacity-development training for preparing the national greenhouse gas inventory for agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) of EMSA countries (plus Argentina, Ecuador and Peru) is being implemented.

SilvaCarbon has been collaborating with FAO and SERVIR to support the use of remote sensing tools for planning and monitoring forest restoration. Since 2020, the collaboration focused on developing a tool that can help identify and prioritize restoration locations, with the help from researchers at Peking University and Duke University. The se.plan tool is developed in SEPAL and combines ecological data on forest restoration with socio-economic data on its benefits, costs and risks. Several countries in the Mekong region have been involved in the tool design and development, and in FY21 Cambodia, Lao PDR and Vietnam started testing the tool in two priority landscapes.To continue building on this momentum, in FY22 SilvaCArbon will share the findings from the Mekong region with other regions, and initiating similar pilots across the Asia-Pacific. Possible new pilot could be in the Philippines or the Pacific Islands region. In addition, in FY22, SilvaCarbon will expand the use of SEPAL for monitoring the impacts of forest restoration. This will include two tailored trainings (online) and practical testing at specific landscapes. This work would contribute to the development and adoption of Forest Landscape Restoration Monitoring Plans at sub-national and national level.

SilvaCarbon and NASA organized a NISAR forest applications workshop. This workshop brought together remote sensing scientists using radar data, and end users to identify how to integrate NISAR into Forest Ecosystem Applications. The outcome of this workshop was to develop a roadmap for integration of SAR into decision support for high-priority and high-feasibility ecosystem applications, feasibility studies, challenges (e.g. working groups needed), information product development. The US Geological Survey (USGS) and SilvaCarbon supported the organization, communications and travel for government officials from Gabon.(Note: This activity is listed in the FY18 work plan for the SilvaCarbon programme. Please communicate with the point of contact listed to find out the status and results of the activity.)

In FY21, SilvaCarbon, through USGS, initiated a detailed scoping of the MRV for REDD+ technical capacity in the Pacific region. This helped identify the technical needs regarding Activity Data and the remote sensing priorities. In addition, USFS has been engaged in the Pacific region with work on forest restoration and combatting illegal logging. Through this work, there has been expression of interest by the Solomon Islands and Fiji to also collaborate on National Forest Inventory implementation. With the placement of the Climate Fellow at the Fiji Ministry of Forestry, in April 2021, there is an increased opportunity to work across all elements required for improved data collection, analysis and integration of NFI and remote sensing data within the context of national forest monitoring. In FY22, the regional SilvaCarbon program, in close collaboration with the Climate Fellow Program, will provide opportunities for accessing technical support to initiate NFI work or targeted support to data analysis.

Development of python libraries to provide a set of portable, extensible and modular Python scripts for earth observation (with especial focus on Sentinel-2) and machine learning, including downloading, preprocessing, creation of base layers and classification

SilvaCarbon and the University of Maryland (UMD) are working with the Forest Institute of Paraguay and USGS to map the most important and significant commodities crops that drive deforestation in the Chaco area. UMD is developing metrics to differentiate the detection of different crops in forested areas from satellite technology. With the collaboration of WRI, USGS will apply this metrics into a regional level and provide other countries with more accurate spatial signatures to map land use and land use conversions.

Quantifying uncertainty in carbon accounting is essential at scales ranging from individual projects to country-level compensation for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Monte Carlo approaches are easy to apply but difficult to implement correctly, with some countries reporting total uncertainties smaller than the largest single source of error, which is incorrect. QUERCA (Quantifying Uncertainty Estimates and Risk for Carbon Accounting) is a relatively new project at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF), building on the strengths of QUEST (Quantifying Uncertainty in Ecosystem Studies) initiative. The goal of this project is to develop and disseminate peer-reviewed tools and approaches for error propagation (the focus on calculating and reporting uncertainty) for use by carbon accounting technicians and researchers, especially those in developing countries. Ultimately, being able to properly evaluate uncertainty will be critical to evaluate the adequacy of carbon reductions made under the Paris Accord. The project will help assess the need for carbon accounting assistance by countries participating in REDD+ programs. The work will develop peer-reviewed tools and approaches for error propagation that are well documented and easy to use by carbon accounting technicians and researchers. Future goals of QUERCA could include building capacity among the users by sharing these tools and approaches via meetings, code sharing, bibliographies, and direct collaboration with the science team.

This activity aims to evaluate how data produced for results-based payments for REDD+ is assisting forested countries to manage their land to achieve sustainable development, reduce carbon emissions, and implement management decisions. Under the Paris Agreement, countries submitted their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC's), presenting their commitments to the international community toward reaching the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At the national level, countries typically have developed their REDD+, forest management, NDC, and SDG agendas independently rather than through a coordinated effort. Aligning the data informing these different efforts can reduce duplication and optimize the use of limited resources. A first workshop was organized in January 2020 to understand how countries in Latin America link REDD+ data to land management, and other reporting forums. A white paper with suggestions and further steps has been published, and SilvaCarbon with the GFOI community will implement a series of activities to educate and inform best scenarios for using the REDD+ data for multiple purposes. Two additional regional workshops in South East Asia and Central Africa will take place in 2022 to collect region-specific input.

Developing and maintaining the REDD+ Sourcebook of methods and procedures for monitoring measuring and reporting.

REDDCopernicus is a project to design a future Copernicus Service on REDD+ and Forest Monitoring. As part of this, a series of online workshops were held to demonstrate different prototype products to improve forest monitoring and reporting in the context of REDD+ MRV as well as other environmental monitoring programmes. Prototype products for forest monitoring were demonstrated in interactive hands-on sessions. The products were Analysis Ready Satellite Data, Forest/ Tree Cover Status Maps, Forest Cover Change Maps, Forest Disturbance and Alerting Maps, Platform and Service Solutions for Data Processing, Download and Analysis. Case studies were presented for ten test sites across the tropics to enable participants to interactively assess the presented concepts. The specific objective of the workshop was to gather user feedback on these products. Participants gained knowledge and examples of how to use the presented products.

REDDCopernicus is a project to design a future Copernicus Service on REDD+ and Forest Monitoring. As part of this, a series of online workshops were held to demonstrate different prototype products to improve forest monitoring and reporting in the context of REDD+ MRV as well as other environmental monitoring programmes. Prototype products for forest monitoring were demonstrated in interactive hands-on sessions. The products were Analysis Ready Satellite Data, Forest/ Tree Cover Status Maps, Forest Cover Change Maps, Forest Disturbance and Alerting Maps, Platform and Service Solutions for Data Processing, Download and Analysis. Case studies were presented for ten test sites across the tropics to enable participants to interactively assess the presented concepts. The specific objective of the workshop was to gather user feedback on these products. Participants gained knowledge and examples of how to use the presented products.

REDDCopernicus is a project to design a future Copernicus Service on REDD+ and Forest Monitoring. As part of this, a series of online workshops were held to demonstrate different prototype products to improve forest monitoring and reporting in the context of REDD+ MRV as well as other environmental monitoring programmes. Prototype products for forest monitoring were demonstrated in interactive hands-on sessions. The products were Analysis Ready Satellite Data, Forest/ Tree Cover Status Maps, Forest Cover Change Maps, Forest Disturbance and Alerting Maps, Platform and Service Solutions for Data Processing, Download and Analysis. Case studies were presented for ten test sites across the tropics to enable participants to interactively assess the presented concepts. The specific objective of the workshop was to gather user feedback on these products. Participants gained knowledge and examples of how to use the presented products.

REDDCopernicus is a project to design a future Copernicus Service on REDD+ and Forest Monitoring. As part of this, a series of online workshops were held to demonstrate different prototype products to improve forest monitoring and reporting in the context of REDD+ MRV as well as other environmental monitoring programmes. Prototype products for forest monitoring were demonstrated in interactive hands-on sessions. The products were Analysis Ready Satellite Data, Forest/ Tree Cover Status Maps, Forest Cover Change Maps, Forest Disturbance and Alerting Maps, Platform and Service Solutions for Data Processing, Download and Analysis. Case studies were presented for ten test sites across the tropics to enable participants to interactively assess the presented concepts. The specific objective of the workshop was to gather user feedback on these products. Participants gained knowledge and examples of how to use the presented products.