State-of-the-art land cover change methods

SilvaCarbon is an interagency technical cooperation program of the US Government working in tropical countries to improve monitoring and reporting of carbon across landscape types. SERVIR, a joint venture between USAID and NASA, initiated activities in the Amazon region with its newest Hub, SERVIR-Amazonia, in mid-2019. The Hub joins a global network active across West Africa, Eastern & Southern Africa, Hindu Kush-Himalaya and the lower Mekong. SERVIR-Amazonia is implemented by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, with consortium partners from the Institute of Agricultural and Forest Management and Certification (IMAFLORA) in Brazil, Conservación Amazónica (ACCA) in Peru, and the US- based Spatial Informatics Group (SIG). The Hub will address environmental and developmental challenges across the Amazon Basin using state-of-the-art geospatial technologies.

SilvaCarbon and SERVIR Joined efforts for a train-the-trainer workshop on the use of open-source tools and improved methods for monitoring and estimating land cover change in Latin America. Topics covered include getting started with Google Earth Engine (GEE) and land use change algorithms such as LandTrendr and CCDC, tailored for in-region academics and researchers. An overview of data collection platforms such as SEPAL (from FAO) and Terra-I (from CIAT) were presented. An introduction to the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from Sentinel-1 for forest change detection and SERVIR’s work in land use and land cover change applications was also discussed.

• Expose the Latin American research community to state-of-the-art methods and platforms for mapping land cover change

• Present and discuss applications of open-source tools and algorithms