Pan-tropical monitoring of deforestation

By Frédéric Achard, Ruth S. DeFries, H. Eva, Matthew C. Hansen, P. Mayaux, H. Stibig. 2007

162 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper reviews the technical capabilities for monitoring deforestation from a pan-tropical perspective in response to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, which is studying the technical issues surrounding the ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in developing countries. The successful implementation of such policies requires effective forest monitoring systems that are reproducible, provide consistent results, meet standards for mapping accuracy, and can be implemented from national to pan-tropical levels. Remotely sensed data, supported by ground observations, are crucial to such efforts. Recent developments in global to regional monitoring of forests can contribute to reducing the uncertainties in estimates of emissions from deforestation. Monitoring systems at national levels in developing countries can also benefit from pan-tropical and regional observations, mainly by identifying hot spots of change and prioritizing areas for monitoring at finer spatial scales. A pan-tropical perspective is also required to ensure consistency between different national monitoring systems. Data sources already exist to determine baseline periods in the 1990s as historical reference points. Key requirements for implementing such monitoring programs, both at pan-tropical and at national scales, are international commitment of resources to increase capacity, coordination of observations to ensure pan-tropical coverage, access to free or low-cost data, and standardized, consensus protocols for data interpretation and analysis.

Subfields: Ecology, Environmental Engineering, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f11614751408a01cb093d03e720bbd9e30415de0

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Citations in the corpus

The potential ecological costs and cobenefits of REDD: a critical review and case study from the Amazon region (2009, background): “The measurement of these terrestrial carbon stocks is, itself, the topic of much debate under the theme ‘Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification’ (MRV; Achard et al., 2007; Gibbs et al., 2007; GOFC-GOLD, 2009).”
Using presence‐only modelling to predict Asian elephant habitat use in a tropical forest landscape: implications for conservation (2010, background): “Across Southeast Asia, tropical deforestation continues at alarming rates (Santiapillai & Jackson, 1990; Achard et al., 2007; Hansen et al., 2009b; Linkie et al., 2009).”
Tropical forest carbon assessment: integrating satellite and airborne mapping approaches (2009, background): “Various satellite techniques are available with spatial resolutions of 10 to 1000 m or more (reviewed by DeFries et al 2005, Achard et al 2007, GOFCGOLD 2009).”
Monitoring and estimating tropical forest carbon stocks: making REDD a reality (2007, methodology): “Methods to assess tropical deforestation are described elsewhere (DeFries et al 2005, 2007, Herold and Johns 2007, Olander et al 2007, Achard et al 2007).”
Linking requirements with capabilities for deforestation monitoring in the context of the UNFCCC-REDD process (2007, methodology): “For an update on current global land cover and forest monitoring activities please refer to Achard et al (2007).”
High-resolution forest carbon stocks and emissions in the Amazon (2010, background): “Satellite remote sensing offers a practical means to monitor forest cover (5, 6), but has not provided high-resolution estimates of carbon emissions (7).”
Combined effects of climate and land‐use change on the future of humid tropical forests (2010, background): “Our knowledge of deforestation and logging varies by region, with the most detailed information available for Amazonia and the least detail in parts of Asia due mainly to the complexity of LU patterns and cloud cover (Achard et al. 2007; Asner et al. 2009).”
Reference scenarios for deforestation and forest degradation in support of REDD: a review of data and methods (2008, background): “They are helpful for finding and assessing areas with the greatest rates of change and for filling in temporal and spatial gaps where the higher resolution data is unavailable or insufficient ( Achard et al 2007 ).”