land cover and change - GOFC-GOLD LC-IT Office - Wageningen UR

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2 REDD Sourcebook online user survey Earlier this year an author survey for the REDD Sourcebook helped to better capture who they are (academia, and/or research fields mainly). The survey showed that a majority of them have been involved in GOFC-GOLD activities for 5 years or more. Two thirds of the authors described themselves as remote sensing experts. Following-up on this initial survey, an online REDD Sourcebook user sur- Members of the GOFC-GOLD Land Cover Implementation Team have been invited to contribute to the redaction of a guidance document on the estimations of greenhouse gas emissions and removals from forest activities. In 2008, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) established the Forest Carbon Tracking (FCT) program. FCT aims to support countries’ national systems for forest carbon tracking by showing how international coordination and cooperation can provide data and information useful to countries’ estimations of greenhouse gas emissions and removals from forest activities. In 2009 GEO also established the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) to work with the FCT. GFOI aims to provide a platform for coordinat- Newsletter N˚ 21 | 2012 vey has been started by the GOFC- GOLD LC PO still in conjunction with Dr Heather Lovell from the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh. The survey aims to better characterise who the Sourcebook users are (country of residence, affiliation), what the Sourcebook is mainly used for (type of studies and location), and what parts of the document should be updated to better fit with the user needs and the new developments occurred in the field of greenhouse gas quantification and MRV reporting in the context of REDD. Outcomes of this study will be released this Fall and will help providing an updated version of the REDD Sourcebook for the next Conference Of Parties (COP- 18) that will occur in Qatar this Fall. Sourcebook users that have not received an invitation for this survey are kindly invited to par- GOFC-GOLD LC-IT contribution to GEO/GFOI guidance document on estimations of GHG emissions and removals from forest activities ing observations, giving assistance and guidance on utilising observations, and developing methodological guidance. GFOI priorities are: a) the monitoring needs of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation and associated activities (REDD+) discussed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) b) development of national natural resource management capacity. GFOI will work with the UNFCCC and the IPCC, which is responsible for the greenhouse gas inventory methods used by countries to report to the UNFCCC. Development of this Methods and Guidance Reference (MGR) document is a key GFOI task. The effort started in 2008/2009 with the development by FCT of a suite of draft documents. While benefitting from these efforts, the document will also build on work and input from an Advisory Group to help assure compli- ticipate using the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ T5CDJFK The REDD Sourcebook can be downloaded on this page: http://www.gofcgold.wur.nl/redd/index.php Fig. 1: Webpage of the survey ance with emerging IPCC and UN requirements in Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV), and to develop a product which can serve the UN and other organisations’ efforts in capacity building related to this goal. The MGR is intended to be used directly by countries and organisations as well as to serve as a teaching tool. It aims to be thorough and accessible and to include examples illustrating the presented technical steps. The publication of the MGR book is expected for April 2013. Fig. 2: GEO societal benefits
Advancements on GEO SB-02 Global Land Cover and Land Cover Change task The GOFC-GOLD Land Cover Project Office keeps playing a leading role in the specification of the GEO SB-02 Global Land Cover and Land Cover Change task coordinating and contributing to the redaction of the document in conjunction with the GEO Secretariat. The current objectives of the task are to: Accuracy assessment of global land cover (GLC) map products is an important part of the mapping procedure. Assessing the accuracy of a map can be done for different purposes such as providing overall measure of the quality of map, evaluating the utility of different algorithms, helping to understand how mapping errors are generated, or just selecting the best map for a particular region. Accuracy assessment also can be conducted to evaluate the utility of the maps for specific applications, particularly in the case of GLC maps. Reference data for accuracy assessments is commonly assumed to be accurate representation of reality, but, in many cases, particularly in GLC validation efforts, reference data are just another classification which are not error free. This issue is well known in the validation of land cover classification. The issues of positional accuracy, variability and bias in the image inter- 3 Newsletter N˚ 21 | 2012 • Provide a suite of global land-cover and land-cover change datasets, based on improved and validated moderate resolution land-cover maps. • Develop
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