2020 Remote Sensing Survey

Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA)

August 2019 / Issue #1
 

Welcome to the first progress report of
the Global Forest Resources Assessment 
2020 Remote Sensing Survey


The FAO conducts a Remote Sensing Survey (RSS) as part of the Global Forest Resources Assessment in close collaboration with FAO Members. The objectives of the RSS are to build country capacities to use remote sensing for forest monitoring as well as to generate independent, robust and consistent estimates of forest area and its changes over time at global, regional and biome levels.

This progress report is the first of a series of communications that will provide updates on the RSS data collection process and support the building of a global network of skilled photo interpreters.
Read more on the FRA 2020 Remote Sensing Survey

Indicators of progress

The objective of the FRA 2020 RSS is to assess roughly 430,000 samples by June 2020, engaging more than 800 experts from all over the world in the interpretation of remote sensing imagery.

SAMPLES
COLLECTED

COUNTRIES INVOLVED

PHOTO INTERPRETERS

Insights from the field: Sanda village in Bali, or the agroforestry case

The concepts of tree cover and forest are not equivalent. Satellites can see trees, but local expertise is needed to identify forest land use.

During our workshop, an area with high tree cover was identified close to the village of Sanda (Bali, Indonesia). During our field visit, the site revealed not to be a forest, but a typical agroforestry system of bananas, coconut, durian, coffee and clove trees.


 

Sentinel-2 mosaic of the area for the year 2018.

High resolution image from Google Earth for the year 2018. From both satellite images the tree covered area looks like natural forest, with a pattern of uneven heights in the canopy.

But once on the ground…Coconut palms, banana trees and clove trees are easily detectable both from the ground and from the drone images. 
The square displayed on the image above is the centroid of the RSS sample plot.

Data collection workshops

Data collection is conducted through participatory and collaborative approaches, engaging national experts in learning-by-doing training sessions on the latest remote sensing methodology and tools, including the online Collect Earth platform which FAO has developed in collaboration with NASA and Google.


Regional workshops

  • Central East Africa: 29 July - 3 August 2019, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Read more
  • East Africa: 8 - 13 July 2019, Maputo, Mozambique
  • South-East Asia: 29 October - 2 November 2018, Bangkok, Thailand 
  • Caribbean: 27 - 31 August 2018, Bridgetown, Barbados

Next workshop for data collection

  • Argentina: 26 - 31 August 2019, Termas de Reyes


National workshops

  • Indonesia: 24 June - 2 July 2019, Kuta, Bali. Read more

  • Brazil: 27 May - 1 June 2019, Belem. Read more 

  • Mexico: 20 - 26 May 2019, Akumal, Quintana Roo. Read more (Spanish)

  • China: 8 - 13 April 2019, Xi’an. Read more

  • India: 11 - 16 March 2019. Dehradun, Uttrakhand. Read more


 

Photo credits:
©2018 Sentinel-2
©2019 CNES/Airbus
©FAO/ Adolfo Kindgard
©FAO/ Harriansyah Djuwahir
See online version

CONTACT 
For more information visit:  http://www.fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/remote-sensing/fra-2020-remote-sensing-survey/en/

or contact us at: FRA@fao.org


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