Satellite imagery key to monitoring changes in forest cover and land use
Forestry experts from across Indonesia are meeting this week on the island of Bali to develop capacities to monitor changes in forest area and land use through the use of satellite images.
The nine-day workshop organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will provide extensive hands-on training on the latest remote sensing tools to collect and analyze data. Participants will learn how to compile statistics on forest area and changes over time as part of the 2020 Global Forest Resources Assessment Remote Sensing Survey.
“We are excited to work closely with national experts and to incorporate their knowledge in the process of assessing forests and their change over time,” said FAO Forestry Officer Adolfo Kindgard.
Some 40 local experts will interpret satellite images at the workshop to produce accurate and comparable data following an internationally agreed methodology and classification system. The data collected will be used to compile global and regional statistics on forest area and its changes over time. The experts will also identify the primary causes of deforestation in the region.
Over half of the Indonesian archipelago, around 53 percent or 91 million hectares of land, is made up of forests. Indonesia was also the second country globally in terms of net loss of forest area from 2010 to 2015, according to the 2015 Global Forest Resources Assessment.
How does the Global Forest Resources Assessment work?
FAO collects data for the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) through a global network of officially nominated national correspondents. Combining their knowledge of forest resources in their countries with data from remote sensing and other sources, allows FAO to provide a global dataset of information on over sixty variables covering all aspects of sustainable forest management. This information can be used to draw up recommendations for governments, civil society and the private sector.
FAO is conducting the Global Remote Sensing Survey to enhance countries capacity to use the latest technology in their own assessments as well as to generate independent, robust and consistent regional and global estimates of forest area and its changes over time.