Project title: Forest Cover and Carbon Mapping in the Greater Mekong Subregion and Malaysia (2011P2-GMS+)

Executing agency: Institute of Forest Resources Information Techniques, Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF);

Target economies: economies in GMS Region, Malaysia

Technical assistance partners: Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM); Forestry Administration of Cambodia; Royal Forest Department of Thailand; Forest Inventory & Planning Institute of Viet Nam; Faculty of forestry of National University of Laos; Forest Department of Myanmar; Guangxi Forest Inventory & Planning Institute (GFIPI), China; Southwest Forestry University, China.

Duration: 24 months, 1 Sep 2011- 30 Aug 2013

Goal: The primary goal of the project is to estimate forest coverage and above-ground carbon stock in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and Malaysia.

Objectives: Develop a framework and methods for forest mapping and carbon estimation using remote sensing technology; Produce forest cover change maps from 2005 to 2010 and a forest above ground biomass map; and Enhance institutional capacity in GMS and Malaysia to perform forest mapping and assessment.

Expected outputs: Annual forest map product at coarse resolution (300~500m) during 2005～2010; Mid-resolution (30m) forest map product in 2005 and 2010; Forest carbon storage mapping product (300~500m) of 2005; The analysis report of forest coverage and carbon storage in each GMS economies and Malaysia.

Activities

 ♦   Methods training workshop

Institutes with intensive remote sensing technologies or forest resources will be organized as an algorithm development and training group. The common data processing and forest information extraction methods will be explored and developed. Technical progress and innovative methodologies will be regularly synthesized and feed to support operational data processing through training workshops and progress meetings.

 ♦   Remote sensing data acquisition and pre-processing

The ways and links to get geospatial data that are available will be built. The satellite imageries include Landsat TM/ETM+, HJ-1A/1B, CBERS, MODIS, MERIS, FY, PALSAR and ICESat GLAS. A standard workflow of data processing will be developed. Multi-scale satellite data will be transferred to the corresponding working teams of GMS and Malaysia.

 ♦   Ground truth database development (compiling existing data)

The data structure of ground truth database will be determined at the beginning of the launch of the project so that the corresponding work teams could follow the standards to collect the ground truth data.

 ♦   Coarse-resolution forest mapping

The coarse-scale forest map will be generated annually using MODIS, MERIS, and FY-3 images. These images are available for free download through the internet. Some composition and reprojection will be performed. Then the classification will be done by several key groups with training data from fine-scale mapping products.

 ♦   Mid-resolution forest mapping

The coarse-scale forest map will be generated annually using CBERS, TM/ETM data around 2005 and HJ-1 data around 2010.

 ♦   Forest carbon storage mapping product

Forest biomass and carbon storage for each ICESat GLAS footprint will estimate with the aid of ground measurements and other reference data. Then these discrete footprint data will fuse with image data like MODIS/MERIS/FY-3 to estimate a spatial continuously biomass/carbon storage map in GMS and Malaysia.