Forest Cover Montioring

FACET Atlas

This atlas was produced as a part of the OSFAC (Observatoire Satellital des Forêts d'Afrique Centrale) initiative "Monitoring the forests of Central Africa using remotely sensed data sets" (FACET in French). FACET is led by OSFAC in collaboration with South Dakota State University and the University of Maryland, and supported by USAID CARPE. Additional support was provided by World Resources Institute.

FACET (Monitoring the forests of Central Africa using remotely sensed data sets) is an OSFAC project whose goal is to quantitatively evaluate the spatiotemporal dynamics of forest change in Central Africa through the use of multi-temporal satellite data. The series of multi-temporal data from the FACET project will be a useful contribution to many environmental and planning projects. All results will be made available to the public.

The FACET publication is the result of a study of forest cover and forest cover change in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The analysis made use of an automated "wall-to-wall" remote sensing method, developed jointly by South Dakota State University and the University of Maryland, and incorporated over 8,000 Landsat ETM+ images. The atlas consists of Landsat image composites coupled with classifications of forest cover and forest cover loss for the periods 2000-2005-2010.

• Access FACET through OSFAC or through the CARPE Data Explorer.

Decadal Forest Change Mapping

The Decadal Forest Change Mapping (DFCM) Project focuses on creating forest cover maps to provide a baseline for future monitoring of forest resources. The University of Maryland (UMD), South Dakota State University (SDSU), and NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center are cooperating to complete this mapping effort using high resolution Landsat Thematic Mapper datasets from circa 1990 to circa 2000 for the 12 Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) landscapes. For the purposes of this project, two time frames have been defined. Time 1 represents satellite imagery obtained from Landsat 4 and 5 missions during the 1980's and 1990's. Time 2 represents imagery predominantly from the Landsat 7 mission during the early 2000's. These data allow for a decadal study (circa 1990 to circa 2000) of forest change over the basin.

This is the first version of the product and subsequent versions will be produced when new, improved input data are obtained.

For each landscape, the DCFM product suite includes:

1. Basin- wide Forest Cover image (Derived from MODIS data collected over 4 years, 2000 - 2004)
2. Composite Landsat Images
• Time 1 Landsat composite image from circa 1990
• Time 2 Landsat composite image from circa 2000
• Combined Time 1 and Time 2 composite cloud free image
3. Forest cover and forest cover change map from circa 1990 to 2000
4. Ancillary Data Sets
• Per-pixel quality assurance flags for Time 1 and Time 2 image composites
5. Metadata

Decadal Change Forest Mapping product suites are available for 3 landscapes: