Deforestation: Enter Google and Space Agencies…

Alejandro Litovsky

October 21, 2009

…to partner on a project for the satellite monitoring of forests. But key to their success from outer space, they argue, will be to find their feet on ground. This is something on our map, as the Pathways to Scale program seeks to catalyze markets and alliances to speed up ecosystem services.

“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 will 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. Details of the company’s involvement would be given in November.

From Outer Space, but with the Feet on the Ground

“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.

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. 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.

But efforts from outer space are likely to be only a part of the solution. Key to the ultimate success of this alliance is bringing in “ground-level” actors to generate data, verification and, not least, to influence the good governance in forest management. “We need some form of validated, assured mechanism,” Briggs added. Assessments of carbon stocks from space need to be calibrated against measurements taken on the ground.

Others are also planning to enter this space: The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) together with the State University of South Dakota has recently declared that they, too, will make available satellite imaging for free to developing countries to monitor deforestation.

Photo Credit: Reuters “An aerial view of a cattle farm is seen in an Amazonian deforested jungle close to Maraba, in Brazil’s central state of Para in this May 3, 2009.”