This was the first regional GFOI workshop on forest monitoring in Central America. The workshop objectives were to:

• Increase the understanding of the current status remote sensing data use to map forest cover in Central America
• Introduce different satellite missions around the globe (COVE tool).
• Present all GFOI capacity building efforts supporting forest cover mapping for reporting to REDD+
• Discuss and compare interoperability of different sets of satellite images.

The workshop brought together participants from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Panama to discuss the support that GFOI can provide, alongside representatives from the U.S. Government, U.S. Universities, the Australian Government and FAO. Support through the Methods and Guidance document, capacity building workshops, SEPAL and the CEOS COVE tool were all discussed.

Methods and Guidance: The purpose of the GFOI Methods and Guidance (MGD) is to provide methodological advice for how to use remotely sensed and ground-based information for forest monitoring, consistent with REDD+ activities. The audience for the MGD are national authorities within countries working to implement national MRV systems. The contents include advice on design decisions, estimating emissions and removals, data provision for estimating emissions and removals, overall uncertainties, and reporting. The MGD are seeking to provide guiding principles, and is not intended to be prescriptive, nor to provide details on technical implementation which are available in other references (e.g. the GOFC-GOLD Sourcebook). Future plans include the incorporation of MDG principles into existing and new training programs.

GFOI SilvaCarbon Capacity building in Mapping Optical Time Series: Time series of data can enable the extraction of additional information, for example transitional classes. There are limitations around storage capacity and compute power, but these limitations are easing. Time series analysis is operational with certain constrains in some countries. Two methods that SilvaCarbon is supporting will be presented: GLAD system (UMD), CCDC system (USGS and BU).

GFOI – FAO Forest Monitoring System – SEPAL: The objectives of SEPAL are to provide training (capacity building and technical assistance/help desk), and to develop a cloud computing storage and processing capacity which countries can use and own. A prototype of the cloud computing platform is currently being use in some countries, and a broader program is under development.

GFOI – CEOS COVE Tool: CEOS Visualization Environment (COVE) tool, enables users to visualize satellite instrument ground tracks. The tool is available here - http://ceos-cove.org.

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