Deforestation prevention using land use monitoring and valuation

By estimating the value of alternative land uses, predicting forest loss and detecting it in near- real time, IMAGES helps land managers and policymakers understand and prioritise trade-offs in unprecedented spatial, temporal and economic detail. IMAGES combines static land use classification rasters constructed using Sentinel-2 optical Earth observation (EO) data with Sentinel-1 radar EO data based forest disturbance information to generate a historic time-series of land use since 2016 and creates predictive modelling based on econometric and machine learning techniques to understand likely paths for land use change over a 10+ year time horizon. The product further uses natural capital valuation techniques to quantify and value a series of ecosystem services including water provision, water filtration, sediment retention, ecotourism and carbon sequestration. IMAGES enables users to analyse land use change scenarios to understand implications of agricultural and forestry policy interventions compared to a business-as-usual case and supports the design of land-use zoning rules and regulations, including high level agricultural, forestry, or climate change targets. Government enforcement agencies may use IMAGES to allocate scarce resources to minimise deforestation by identifying times and locations that forests are most at risk of loss or degradation. The product allows policymakers to quantify, value and visualize the valuable ecosystem services forests produce to better inform investment planning.