Tasked with using geospatial technology to count trees in a remote region of northeast Nicaragua, Rene Zamora, a Forest Economist from the World Resources Institute (WRI), had three priorities.
First, he found some unused space in a local school building in the town of Bonanza; second, he contracted with a satellite provider of Internet services; and third, he spread the word so that local people could help. Most of his recruits worked in cattle ranching and agriculture and had never used a computer before – but they were keen to give it a try.
The end result was an FAO-WRI “mapathon”, where local people first learned the necessary computer skills and data-collection techniques before applying this knowledge over the rest of the week, all with the goal of creating a high-resolution map of where the region’s trees are.
Mapathon participants are trained to scour geographic micro-ranges in their home territories and identify individual trees. This is done through FAO’s Open Foris tool, Collect Earth, which uses freely available images from NASA, the European Space Agency, Google Earth and Planet Data from Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative. This detailed imagery allows people to see objects as small as half a meter and go back in time to assess any changes in the land.
Using this Collect Earth tool, experts and locals were able to update previous surveys and monitor the restoration progress of tree cover.
This mapathon in Nicaragua, co-organised by FAO and WRI, is just one example of how Open Foris, a free and open-source software tool designed for efficient data collection, analysis and reporting, can help communities and governments assess and restore their ecosystems.
