Supporting REDD+ Activities and National Forest Inventories with Copernicus Satellite Data in Central and East Africa.

To protect forests and reduce deforestation and forest degradation, the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has initiated the “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation” (REDD+) programme. The REDD+ approach requires assessment of historical forest reference levels and continuous deforestation/degradation mapping for reporting. Earth Observation (EO) technologies are useful to map forests. But up to now, only very few forest monitoring systems are tailored specifically to REDD+ requirements due to limitations in data availability, sensor resolutions and the technical capacities in developing countries. Forest degradation, a major driver of carbon emissions, is not tackled at all. The temporal, spectral and spatial characteristics of the Sentinel satellites offer new possibilities for REDD+ monitoring that are intended to be exploited in the REACTIFI project.

The goal of the REACTIFI project is the development of a web-based forest inventory (FI) service tailored to REDD+ Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) in Central and East Africa. The service provides information about forest status, deforestation and degradation. It is based primarily on Copernicus satellite data, in combination with airborne LiDAR -data and terrestrial data. It will allow practitioners, forest managers and administration to explore relevant EO data and derived REDD+ products for their areas of interest and to use that data for FI and REDD+ activities.

REACTIFI integrates different data sources in a multi-scale geographic information system. Sentinel-1 &-2 data, as well as LiDAR and aerial RGB imagery data are used to create map products on forest status and forest change with a dedicated focus on forest degradation. We will map relevant parameters for REDD+ MRV (LU/LC, forest type and structure, emission factors) and derive biomass models. The web-based service will highlight potentially harmful changes and hot spots of deforestation and degradation.