Tropical Forest Geospatial Data And Redd

With an increasing role of tropical forests supporting a range of ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, water regulation, soil conservation, timber, non-timber forest products, carbon sequestration, and climate change mitigation, the importance of forest resources management has become very crucial. The tropical forests of Indochina countries are rich in biodiversity and carbon density, and thus are significant from social, ecological, political and economic aspects. These forests provide essential livelihoods to the local and indigenous people. Rapid economic growth, agriculture expansion, illegal logging, population growth, and urbanisation have been reported as major contributors to almost all cases of deforestation. Due to rapid development, forest resources are at a great risk. The FRA 2010 report shows that deforestation caused a loss of about 13 million hectares of tropical forests per year from the year 2000 to 2010. Therefore, there is an urgent need for better management of these resources. This book partially contributes towards climate change mitigation by implementing the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism. To mitigate climate change, most present studies are now concentrated on afforestation, reforestation and reducing deforestation and degradation. This book is focused on the application of multi-sensor remote sensing techniques to manage Cambodian forests for the effective implementation of the REDD+ mechanism. In this context, it is important to obtain reliable and consistent information of (a) forest cover, (b) deforestation, and (c) forest biomass to estimate CO2 emissions for the improvement of national carbon accounting. Additionally, this information will also be used for the development of the measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) system and for the management of forest resources to support sustainable forest management. Current knowledge is very limited with regard to the MRV system for REDD+ mechanism implementation. This book demonstrates the use of multi-sensor remote sensing techniques to manage the forest resources more sustainably. Further, it includes a concept on how precisely we can measure various forest parameters to minimise the uncertainty and to validate the results based on field data. The study is very much interdisciplinary in nature. It integrates core remote sensing techniques with the socio-economic angle of the REDD+ mechanism. It emphasises on remote sensing as a technique for ensuring the MRV of REDD+ initiatives, taking into consideration its cost effectiveness in implementation.

Tropical habitats may contain more than a third of the world's plant and animal species; Costa Rica alone is home to one of the highest levels of biodiversity per unit area in the world, and stands at center stage in worldwide conservation efforts. Within such regions, the use of state-of-the-art digital mapping technologies—sophisticated techniques that are relatively inexpensive and accessible—represents the future of conservation planning and policy. These methods, which employ satellites to obtain visual data on landscapes, allow environmental scientists to monitor encroachment on indigenous territories, trace park boundaries through unmarked wilderness, and identify wildlife habitats in regions where humans have limited access. Focusing on the rich biodiversity of Costa Rica, the contributors demonstrate the use of geographic information systems (GIS) to enhance conservation efforts. They give an overview of the spatial nature of conservation and management and the current status of digital mapping in Costa Rica; a review of the basic principles behind digital mapping technologies; a series of case studies using these technologies at a variety of scales and for a range of conservation and management activities; and the results of the Costa Rican gap analysis project. GIS Methodologies for Developing Conservation Strategies provides powerful tools for those involved in decision-making about the natural environment, particularly in developing nations like Costa Rica where such technologies have not yet been widely adopted. For specialists in such areas as geography, conservation biology, and wildlife and natural resource management, the combination of conceptual background and case examples make the book a crucial addition to the literature.

REDD+ is one of the leading near-term options for global climate change mitigation. More than 300 subnational REDD+ initiatives have been launched across the tropics, responding to both the call for demonstration activities in the Bali Action Plan and the market for voluntary carbon offset credits.

This book covers several themes related to forestry, agriculture, water, soil, urban, and atmospheric research. GIScience technology systems have increased in significance in recent decades and have the ability to acquire information at ground level with a higher spectral resolution using a field radio-spectrometer, which is a great improvement compared to other remote sensing systems. GIScience technology systems are widely used for solving and understanding the concept of forestry, crop, water resources, and related research themes. This book aims to advance the scientific understanding of GIScience technology and applications. The chapters present GIScience data integration with other sources such as LiDAR, Multi-spectral data and their applications in forestry, crop assessment, soil assessment, mineral mapping and related themes. The book will be of interest to geospatial experts, modellers, foresters, agricultural scientists, hyperspectral remote sensing and space community, ecologists and conservation communities, environmental consultants, big data compilers, and computing experts.

In this Infobrief, we outline the rules and choices to be addressed by participatory countries in REDD+ activities, and show some technical problems they can face, and some options they can adopt.

In recent years, the conservation of tropical forests has received worldwide publicity whereas effective forest management, particularly for timber extraction, has attracted little attention and gained some notoriety. The overall aim of the present paper was to examine how environmental micro-variation in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve of Belize can influence species distribution and thereby inform management strategy. The paper deals first with the background to forest management in Belize, then considers the methodology used in the present study and fin~~ly assesses the preliminary results. The specific objectives are: (1) to assess the effects of changing scale on the variability of selected individual soil properties in forest plots within the same vegetation class; and (2) to examine the variation in soil properties and tree species distribution, and to integrate environmental and ecological data over a range of scales. BACKGROUND Whereas the global and regional distribution of tropical forests is broadly governed by climatic and altitudinal variation, individual forest tracts need to consider a range of other, locally important factors to explain species distribution and change. With very high species diversity, tropical forests present a major challenge in the attempt to unravel controlling factors in distribution and growth (Swaine et aI. 1987). Research that attempts to explain diversity has looked at species distribution according to a range of factors, with a general recognition that soil fertility plays a significant if ill defined role (Swaine 1996).

This book advances the scientific understanding and application of space-based technologies to address a variety of areas related to sustainable development; including environmental systems analysis, environmental management, clean processes, green chemistry, and green engineering. Geo-spatial techniques have gained considerable interest in recent decades among the earth and environmental science communities for solving and understanding various complex problems and approaches towards sustainable technologies. The book encompasses several scopes of interests on sustainable technologies in areas such as water resources, forestry, remote sensing, meteorology, atmospheric and oceanic modeling, environmental engineering and management, civil engineering, air and environmental pollution, water quality problems, etc. The book will appeal to people with an interest in geo-spatial techniques, sustainable development and other diverse backgrounds within earth and environmental sciences field.