SarVision at GFOI 2023 conference in Rome
SarVision was present at the GFOI conference that was held from 9-12 May 2023 in Rome.
The main topic of the conference was the role of forest information in addressing climate change, including information for REDD+, Nationally Determined Contributions, Restoration and Blue Carbon. During the conference it became apparent that forest degradation is one of the R&D priority topics. While many global monitoring applications were demonstrated (GFW, SEPAL, JJ-FAST, RADD) , they all fail to include forest degradation. The director of Forest Resources Inventory and Monitoring of the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Ir. Belinda A. Margono, stressed the importance of including forest degradation in forest monitoring. She concluded that it appears that currently nobody knows how to do this. Other countries present at the conference had similar interest in monitoring forest degradation.
However, SarVision has already developed an operational and unique deforestation and forest degradation monitoring system called SarSentry . This near real time RS based methodology is able to detect and quantify forest degradation that is presently not detected by any other wide area optical or radar monitoring system in the world. Free of cost Copernicus Sentinel-1 data are used which makes the monitoring service very cost effective. At present the state of Pará is using SarSentry as part of their SIMAR/Pa forest monitoring system.
SarVision demonstrated the SarSentry system in an exhibition booth at the conference and got a lot of positive feedback from the organizations that visited the booth. Next to SarSentry SarVision also demonstrated its innovative SarCarbon system, an integrated RS based carbon monitoring system that combines different RS sensors (optical, radar, lidar) for accurate estimation of carbon stock baselines and monitoring and estimation of carbon budgets trough time. SarCarbon includes forest degradation output of SarSentry for its assessment of carbon change in between baseline years.
As SarCarbon requires only a limited amount of field information, investment costs for clients are minimized.
