When is a forest not a forest? When it’s a plantation

Source: The Star

Published on 23rd February, 2015 by Julian Moll-Rocek

Ongoing work into tree cover differentiation will help resolve the main criticism against remote sensing-based forest-monitoring tools: the lack of distinction between natural forests and plantations.

How forests are defined can affect aerial monitoring of deforestation.

“We live in a world of constant beta,” explains James Anderson, communications officer for the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) forests programme. Nearly every week features are tweaked on the Global Forest Watch (GFW) platform, an innovative mapping system that allows users to track changes in global forest extent, among other features. Constant innovation in technological capability as well as broad social engagement, allowing for more on-the-ground verification, keep GFW on the cutting edge of forest monitoring.

However, one fundamental thing remains elusive: what exactly is a forest? With forest definitions differing from country to country, and primary forests, secondary forests, and even tree plantations all perceived collectively as “tree cover” by satellite data, how does one accurately keep tabs on land changes? To confront this issue, GFW has implemented a number of new features in recent months. One of these allows the user to adjust the density of tree cover to suit their own definition of “forest”. Ranging from 10% to 75% canopy cover, this reflects the flexible definition put forth by the Kyoto Protocol, which required countries to define a national canopy cover between 10% and 30%.

However, the function is not without its caveats; namely, it can only be applied to forest extent and loss, but not to forest gains. As Dr Fred Stolle, manager of WRI’s Forest Landscape Objective explained, “a signal of a tree falling is very easily recognised, but, of course, regrowing from a seedling to a bigger seedling to a tree takes a couple years before you see it. How we deal with that, we don’t know yet.” In particular, the difficulty in using remote sensing techniques in classifying the re-growth of forests means serious challenges for monitoring forest restoration goals set by the United Nations.

WRI, Google launch ground-breaking online tool to protect forests

Source: Eco-Business

Published on 24th February, 2014

The World Resources Institute, Google and international partners have launched the Global Forest Watch, an interactive online forest monitoring system that can enable real-time tracking of deforestation, leaving irresponsible companies nowhere to hide

The World Resources Institute and Google have partnered for forest conservation by launching the Global Forest Watch, an online monitoring platform that tracks forest loss and gain worldwide. Image: Global Forest Watch

The world’s vulnerable trees have found a new guardian in the latest technologies of cloud computing and crowdsourcing with the launch of a ground-breaking tool on Thursday developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and Google to help manage forests worldwide.The WRI and Google, along with over 40 partners including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Unilever, combined their expertise and operational knowledge to develop the free Global Forest Watch (GFW) system, an online monitoring platform that can track tree cover loss and gain around the globe.

“Global Forest Watch is a near-real time monitoring platform that will fundamentally change the way people and businesses manage forests. From now on, the bad guys cannot hide and the good guys will be recognised for their stewardship,” said Dr Andrew Steer, WRI president and chief executive, at the launch in Newseum, Washington, D.C.

Google donated the high-performance technologies for this initiative. Similar to their Google Earth platform, the Global Forest Watch website fuses satellite technology and imagery, cloud computing and crowdsourcing to provide high-resolution data for analysis and downloading.

The new tool will have widespread implications across industries, said the WRI. Since it is free to use and non-technical, non-government organisations and members of civil society can be alerted when forest loss are detected, helping them to quickly mobilise and take action.

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Partnerships like Global Forest Watch that bring together governments, businesses and civil society and technological innovation are the kinds of solutions we need to reduce forest loss, alleviate poverty and promote sustainable economic growth

Rajiv Shah, US Agency for International Development administrator

The system, with its analytical tools, also displays layers of boundaries of protected areas, logging and mining activities, palm oil and other concessions, daily forest fire alerts from NASA, agricultural commodities and