UN food agency offers free satellite monitoring of forests

Yahoo News 20 Oct 09;

ROME (AFP) – The UN food agency Tuesday announced a satellite image database on the degradation of the world's forests as part of efforts to reduce global warming caused by greenhouse gases.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation will provide high-resolution satellite data free to developing countries in partnership with other organisations including the State University of South Dakota and US Geological Survey in the United States and European Union Joint Research Center, a statement said.

"Never before has data of this kind been provided directly to users in developing countries," said FAO Director General Jacques Diouf.

"Monitoring will be cheaper, more accurate and transparent for countries that want to participate in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation."

The data "will result in sound and objective estimates of global forest and land cover change," said Jeffrey Eidenshink, acting director of the US Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Center.

The database will provide an essential tool for individual countries to measure, report and verify their carbon emissions, the FAO said.

Global forest monitoring to help mitigate climate change
FAO 20 Oct 09;

Emissions from deforestation and forest degradation must be reduced

20 October 2009, Rome - For the first time worldwide, free and ready-to-use high-resolution satellite data is now available to monitor forests and help reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The monitoring system has been launched by FAO and other partners as part of the Global Forest Resources Assessment.

"This brings a revolution to the forest monitoring field. Never before have data of this kind been provided directly to users in developing countries. Monitoring will be cheaper, more accurate and transparent for countries that want to participate in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation," said FAO Director General Jacques Diouf.

The world's forests are in the spotlight as talks for a new climate change deal move towards an agreement on how to achieve reduced emissions from forests next December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

A mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) would be a breakthrough in the fight against climate change and represents one of the areas where most progress is expected in Copenhagen.

It is the first time that a global forest scheme has the potential to generate such a magnitude of benefits for developing countries. Diouf underlined how a REDD mechanism would not only bring a reduced impact on climate but also much needed resources to improve livelihoods, conservation efforts and food security.

Tools to make REDD work

At the same time, many issues remain to be solved before REDD will work. One of the corner stones is Measurement, Reporting and Verification systems of carbon, which must be in place for carbon accounting and payments to be carried out in an appropriate and transparent way. Today, the majority of developing countries do not have sufficient monitoring systems in place.

Satellite remote sensing has provided images of the Earth for over 30 years. The technology and associated science has vastly improved the knowledge and perception of our planet.

"The FAO Forest Resource Assessment is unprecedented in so many ways. It is the most comprehensive and challenging use of high resolution satellite data ever attempted and the use of the historical time-series of Landsat images will result in sound and objective estimates of global forest and land cover change." says Jeffrey Eidenshink, Acting Director of the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. Other partners include South Dakota State University, U.S. and the European Union Joint Research Center.

The monitoring system delivers data in a global sample grid at 13 000 locations and provides tools for their interpretation. It is designed to improve global and regional information on forest change in FAO's assessments of forests.

For a country the sample grid can be intensified and become a cost-efficient approach to measure national forest trends.

"This system will not cover all information needs for REDD, but the remote sensing approach, together with field verification, will provide forest area changes in a robust and verifiable way - a crucial component for carbon accounting under REDD," said Mette Wilkie who coordinates the Global Forest Resources Assessment Programme at FAO.

The UN-REDD Programme, a collaborative partnership between FAO, UNDP and UNEP supports developing countries to prepare for REDD.

"National monitoring systems must be enhanced, not just looking at carbon dynamics but also measuring multiple benefits of REDD and drivers of deforestation. This new global monitoring system is a very important step in demonstrating that REDD can become a reality" said Peter Holmgren responsible for FAO's involvement in UN-REDD and FAO's focal point for Climate Change.

Space agencies, Google seek ways to save forests
Alister Doyle, Reuters 20 Oct 09;

OSLO (Reuters) - Space agencies and Google Inc are helping an international project to monitor forests by satellite to fight global warming, the head of an international earth observation group said on Tuesday.

Deforestation from Brazil to Indonesia is blamed for emitting about a fifth of all greenhouse gases from human activities -- plants soak up carbon as they grow and release it when they burn or rot.

"The only way to measure forests efficiently is from space," said Jose Achache, director of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), which is linking governments, space agencies such as NASA and others in a new partnership to measure forests.

The system would aim to make annual assessments of forest carbon stocks, compared to a current five-year cycle.

Google, which offers satellite images via its Google Earth site, would contribute with a related project, Achache told Reuters in a phone interview from London. Details of the company's involvement would be given in November.

A 190-nation U.N. climate pact due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December is likely to approve a plan to slow deforestation in tropical nations. That may include putting a price on carbon stored in trees as part of a new market.

"Investors will want some kind of guarantee that when they are putting money into forests that the forests ... will remain there and remain in good condition," Achache said.

NASA, ESA

America's NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and national space agencies of Japan, Germany, Italy, India and Brazil were among those taking part in the forest mapping.

Costs would be low, Achache said, since satellite data were already being collected for other purposes. GEO's members include 80 governments as well as U.N. organizations.

Seven countries would act as pilot projects in 2009-10 -- Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Guyana, Indonesia, Mexico and Tanzania -- based on satellite images taken in recent months.

Satellite images from the U.S. Landsat go back to 1972 -- enabling the world to work out deforestation rates by comparing images with snapshots of current forests. A base year of 1990 might be used, in line with the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for cutting industrial emissions.

Under the satellite project, a first phase was to show how much of a country was forested. A second phase would be to work out how much carbon was locked up in each type of forest.

Stephen Briggs, head of ESA's Earth Observation Science, Applications and Future Technologies unit, said radar images of forests can measure carbon above ground since the microwaves are scattered by passing through vegetation.

"We need some form of validated, assured mechanism," he said. Assessments of carbon stocks from space need to be calibrated against measurements taken on the ground.

David Singh, head of Conservation International in Guyana, said forest credits could help the South American nation.

"So far we have low deforestation rates. But there is an upgraded road joining northern Brazil to coastal Guyana. That has the possibility of opening the region," he said.