Presentation of results of collaborative work CIAT-MINAM
On December 10th, 2015 the Ministry of Environment of Peru and the Terra-i CIAT team, presented in Lima, the results of the collaborative work that has been done between the two institutions in capacity building of SIGMINAM.
Terra-i Team
The conference included presentations of different projects developed during the year under the interinstitutional work of MINAM - CIAT. Including the field validation in Yurimaguas (carried out under the umbrella of the Sustainable Amazonian Landscapes project), website changes, improvements of the Terra-i tool, collaborations with other institutions and future developments.
Furthermore, specialists from the Directorate General of Land Management (DGOT) MINAM, showed how the data provided by the Terra-i tool have been used. An example was the use of alerts to focus activities of monitoring and control of illegal/ informal mining in Madre de Dios and Puno.
By statistical analysis of Terra-i data, the DGOT has a tool that allows to appreciate more clearly the effects of their actions on the territory. The statistics are also important for specialists from other directions, which are not familiar with spatial information. It facilitates them to understand the dynamics of vegetation cover change at national level, which provides a more integrated work between institutions.
Photo by DGOT - MINAM
As part of the activities certificates of attendance and participation were given to 15 specialists of the MINAM. This group was present at the 4 workshops that were realized throughout the year on the use, scientific bases and applications of the Terra-i tool as early warning system to detect changes of land cover and land use.
The realization of these workshops is an important step for the MINAM specialists to begin processing the data locally. Also during the different sessions participants suggested improvements concerning the tool and the website of which some have been implemented.
The Terra-i team together with CRS El Salvador under the Raices project carried out a virtual workshop through the teams platform to technicians from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, CARITAS, Universidad El Salvador, CENTA, about the Mapping of land cover using remote sensors and open source tools such as GEE, SEPAL and QGIS- Plugin Semi Automatic Classification.
Near real-time vegetation loss detection in Southwestern Ethiopia: calibration, validation, and implementation of the Terra-i system
The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) (the Alliance) conducted a training for local stakeholders on the use of Terra-i as part of the collaboration with the Netherlands Development Organisation – SNV in the Coffee Agroforestry and Forest Enhancement for REDD+ (CAFÉ-REDD) Project.
From May 8-12, 2017, the Terra-i team, together with staff from the DGOTA of Peru's Ministry of Environment, carried out the first field validation of vegetative land cover changes detected during Terra-i monitoring for 2016 and 2017, using the technology UAV. This work was carried out under the framework of the project “Sustainable Amazonian Landscapes”. The team carried out over-flights with a Phantom 3 advanced rotor drone and a fixed-wing Ebee drone in seven townships of Yurimaguas. The objective of this work was to recognize the dynamics of land cover and land use changes in the region while at the same time to validate the accuracy of the detections of forest loss being monitored by Terra-i in Yurimaguas.
The Terra-i team has worked hard on renovating Terra-i’s website since early this year. A set of new features on the website provides interactive contents and facilitates adaptation to the mobile devices of our users. The fresh website was developed using the latest update of an open-source, Java-based web system, Magnolia CMS 5.4.4. This update was customized to add different categories of interaction such as news, vegetation cover changes, and information, among others.
Globally more than 1 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods. Forests play a crucial role in climate regulation, ecosystem services provision and regulation, water supply, carbon storage and many other functions that support biodiversity. Currently the global rate of deforestation is substantial, and there is a growing need for timely, spatially explicit data that flag natural vegetation changes due to human activities.
The latest update of Terra-i has been used with the Co$ting Nature ecosystem services assessment tool to understand the impacts of recent forest loss in Colombia on biodiversity and ecosystem services.
During the 1st and 12th of June 2015, the Terra-i team, together with the Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana (IIAP) and the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (VLIR-UNALM), conducted the second field validation of the data produced by the Terra-I system. This time, the study area was the Yurimaguas district, Alto Amazonas province, Loreto region (Peru). We used information on populated places, main roads, rivers and information on land cover changes detected for 2013, 2014 and 2015 to define the 65 sampling points (or Terra-I pixels) for the validation process (Figure 1).