The European Space Agency has awarded a contract worth €100,000 to demonstrate the value of its co-ordinated multi-satellite optical imagery for tropical forest monitoring in Indonesia.
There is an urgent need for the monitoring of global forests. Up-to-date information is vital to improve the effective management of forests and control carbon emissions under the Kyoto strategy for combating climate change.
In the last 12 years, Indonesia in particular has suffered from forest and peat soil fires. This is due in part to continued land clearance by both local farmers and government. It is also due to El Nino, which results in low rainfall over Indonesia. The El Nino effect has created a tinderbox that destroyed more than 9.7 million hectares of forest area in 1997-98. The result has been the continued degradation of thick peat soils through fire and erosion.
The poisonous smoke and smog released means these fires are not only dangerous to Indonesia but also surrounding countries. The tragedy reaches beyond the Asia-Pacific; studies have found that biomass burning in Indonesia contributes significantly to atmospheric carbon.
The objective of the ESA project is to demonstrate the benefits of a multi-sensor approach for systematic wide area monitoring of tropical forests at high resolution. It will exploit the capabilities of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) and synthetic aperture radars, which have all-weather acquisition capabilities.
High resolution data has many advantages in forestry applications. For example, it is required to detect selective forest degradation (as opposed to large-scale clearcuts) and the appearance of new logging tracks. The project will demonstrate the ability to detect annual changes (and just as importantly, the absence of change) in forest cover associated with logging, protection, re-afforestation schemes and other influences.
The project will be undertaken by DMCii, which operates the DMC, the University of Leicester and the World Resources Institute (WRI). Experts from Leicester University have a long track record of research into peat fires in Indonesia and the World Resources Institute is active in tropical forest monitoring through its Global Forest Watch programme. DMCii has co-ordinated imaging campaigns over the rainforests of the Amazon Basin, the CongoBasin and South East Asia, and temperate forests in Siberia, Scandinavia, Europe and North America.
The DMC consists of five small satellites carrying optical sensors. The constellation will soon gain three new satellites with 20 metre resolution. It is ideally suited to regular and wide area imaging, and is capable of imaging a wide swath (650 km) with 32 metre resolution on a daily basis. The three new DMC satellites will offer much more detailed imagery, increasing the achievable resolution to 20 metres.
Source: www.asmmag.com
