Successful south-south exchange between Latin American countries on forest degradation monitoring
Experts from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru met in the Amazon city of Florencia (Colombia)
Forest degradation generates large carbon emissions (34% of forest sector emissions, FAO 2020). Preventing forest degradation reduces emissions while safeguarding forest ecosystem health and maximizes forest productivity to community livelihoods and the broader economy. Estimating carbon emissions and removals from forest degradation is thus a requirement to participate in new climate finance opportunities.
Defining forest degradation is crucial to ensure reliable estimates
Achieving an operationally viable definition of “forest degradation” was a central theme of the discussions during the exchange. The main challenge here is that monitoring forest degradation involves quantifying emissions and removals. Emissions occur mainly due to the biomass loss from the removed trees or dead organic matter. However, if land remains forested, albeit degraded, removals -meaning carbon removed from the atmosphere - occur by recovering biomass through natural regeneration over a certain time. The historical forest monitoring to measure loss or gain is meticulous, considering that the recovery time may vary from humid to dry or mountain forests.
Free access to satellite images ensures continuous monitoring of forest degradation
The biggest challenge for countries is to detect forest degradation at a national scale, as it requires access to high-resolution satellite images. In recent years, access to remote sensing data has been made available for free. In the early 2000s, medium-resolution Landsat images (30 meters) were made freely available. In 2014, access to the first images of the SENTINEL (10 meters) family was released, and since 2016 tropical countries gained access to Planet images (Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) facilitated by FAO. Given these opportunities, the countries are working on solutions to manage historical time series with different spatial and temporal resolutions. But beyond this, countries find it risky to adopt a methodology with higher resolution images, in the event free access is subsequently lost.
Deforestation and forest degradation monitoring will be more efficient and reliable if quality field data is integrated
Systematic field-based measurements are essential to improve the mapping algorithms and interpretation of forest degradation using satellite images. Data from national forest inventory with permanent plots are necessary to calculate the emission and removals factors for forest carbon gains and losses. During the meeting, the challenges of integrating field data with remote sensing were discussed. Participants visited the forest at El Timi community, with the aim of validating the interpretation of a degraded forest using combined FAO tools from SEPAL and Collect Earth Online. Due to the importance of ground data in improving estimates of forest degradation, countries hope to overcome financial and institutional barriers to maintaining continuous measurement cycles for National Forest Inventories.
Although countries have made progress in defining and measuring forest degradation, challenges remain in generating information on a regular basis. The next steps of this exchange will be to explore virtual training on specific topics, such as the estimation of uncertainties, and communicating meeting results to decision-makers and donors.
Video EN: Monitoring forest degradation and sustainability in the Amazon
For more information:
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Estimating Emissions and Removals from Forest Degradation: A South-South Exchange in May 2023
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Estimating emissions and removals from forest degradation - An overview of country experience
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From reference levels to results reporting: REDD+ under the UNFCCC. 2020 update (FAO)
Authors:
Carla Ramírez
MRV REDD+ Technical advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean
FAO
Maricarmen Ruiz-Jaen
Latin America and the Caribbean REDD+ Coordinator
FAO
Marcela Olguín
Climate Change Technical advisor
SilvaCarbon, Climate Change Unit
Forest Service International Programs
This news article was originally published by UN-REDD Programme