One year into the project, the collaboration between UNCCD, FAO and GLOBHE already bears fruit: individual baobab trees can be now recognized from space and a computer system has been trained to plot them on a map. In the Sahel region, where trees play an important role in fixating soils, providi...

The National Forest Monitoring (NFM) team is proud to announce that in just two weeks, the online facilitated course, Forest and Land Monitoring for Climate Action – SEPAL is at maximum capacity (with 2,372 participants registered).

Ghana has received its first Emission Reduction payment from the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) Carbon Fund, a World Bank funding mechanism. In J...

“We are in the golden age of open data and remote sensing”, said FAO Forestry Officer Erik Lindquist opening the panel discussion at the Connecting Forests and People event organized by FAO's National Forest Monitoring team on October 20 in the framework of the Science and Innovation Forum 2022. ...

The way that we monitor the world’s forests has changed dramatically in recent years. Fifteen years ago, many countries still made maps and recorded information about their forests and land manually on paper. Forest monitoring involved considerable investment for developing countries, often ...

One of the largest earth observation events in the world took place from 23-27 May in Bonn, Germany.  An event the FAO Forestry Division could not miss, the fifth edition of the Living Planet Symposium 2022 (LPS22) brought together over 5000 scientists and researchers to discuss the latest f...

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has become a member of the Digital Public Goods Alliance. This underscores FAO’s commitment to the development and championing of digital public goods that will help achieve sustainable agrifood systems and contribute to the Sustai...

Half a century ago, the first Earth Day started an environmental revolution. Since then, many strategies, movements, and actions have been taken to create a more sustainable future. This year, 2022, Earth Day is focused on the engagement of “more than 1 billion people, governments, institutions, ...

Connecting Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and Angola in Southern Africa, KAZA - the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area - is the largest terrestrial conservation area network in the world, home to iconic wildlife migrations, one of the natural wonders of the world.

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 co...

With their ability to absorb up to one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, trees play an essential role in the ongoing fight against climate change. Yet, according to data published by Global Forest Watch, the world’s tropical rainforests disappeared at a rate of one football pitch every six s...

Every year, deliberately set fires and wildfires burn millions of hectares of forests and other types of vegetation around the world. In 2015, approximately 98 million hectares of forest were affected by fires (FAO, 2020). These fires occurred mainly in the tropics, where they damaged about 4 per...

The Hand-in-Hand Geospatial Platform (HiH GP) is a new and unparalleled source of accessible and transparent geospatial data from across the sectors of agriculture, fisheries and forestry. The platform includes over one million geospatial layers, bringing together geographic information and stati...

La Soufriere volcano started erupting on the 9th of April 2021. Explosions and accompanying ashfall are occurring since then at various magnitude and intervals. This event poses serious challenges for the people as well as natural resources and infrastructure. A rapid geospatial assessment was ca...

There has never been a more urgent need to restore damaged ecosystems than now. About 60% of the global ecosystem services have been degraded during the last 50 years. Restoring ecosystems is crucial for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The United Nations (UN) General ...

When we think of Sudan, the first image that comes to mind is vast deserted areas with scattered vegetation. Yet, in this typical northeastern African landscape, forests are among the most important natural resources. They have a critical environmental role to play as windbreaks and shelterb...

Unprecedented damages have been recorded after Category 5 hurricane Iota passed over Providencia Island, Columbia between the 15th and 16th of November 2020. Communication to the island was lost for at least 20 hours. In order to rapidly coordinate emergency response, remote, geospatial products ...

We all know that making good decisions requires good data. This is clear in our day-to-day lives. How can we choose what to wear in the morning without knowing whether it will rain or not? How would we find the way to work without a map? Why would we ever go shopping if we didn’t know that the fr...

According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)  there are many situations that can cause floods , and some of them are: heavy rainfall, ocean waves coming on shore, such as a storm surge, melting snow and ice, dams or levees breaking.

In September 2019, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) partnered with Planet to provide high spatial and temporal resolution satellite imagery to support the national forest monitoring systems of eight tropical forested countries: Chile, Colombia, Democratic Republic...