REDD at National & Project Scales: Dedicated Geo-Spatial Solutions to Meet User Needs
Rigal, Didier¹; Houdry, Patrick¹; Kuntz, steffen²; Lampin, Igor^1
1ASTRIUM GEO Information Services, FRANCE; ²ASTRIUM GEO Information Services, GERMANY

Abstract for REDD Special Session – ESA Living Planet Symposium 2013 REDD at national & project scales: dedicated geo-spatial solutions to meet user needs

Authors: Patrick HOUDRY, Didier RIGAL, Igor LAMPIN, Steffen KUNTZ Astrium GEO-Information Services

REDD embraces a large variety of forest ecosystems and socio-economic issues, various deforestation drivers and so-called national circumstances, and therefore projects and initiatives that are implanted on the ground to curve deforestation - along with ensuring social development and environmental conservation - can be of very different nature.
Satellite imagery has proved to be a key enabling technology about REDD, in bringing vision of the past, updated & reliable information to manage risks and support decision making, and transparency through the capacity to regularly monitor large areas. Regardless scenario, REDD calls for a range of geo-information services which can be grouped in three families: (i) Baselining, (ii) Cadastral applications and (iii) Measurement Reporting Verification.
Accuracy, reliability, on-time and on-purpose are key criteria to get adoption from all actors, either working at local scale, typically project owners having very operational needs to be certified and to issue carbon credits, or working at more regional / national scale and for instance seeking at measuring effectiveness of policies and measures that drive their national strategy.
Based upon those considerations, the proposed presentation aims to review through very concrete initiatives how public and private actors working at national or project scale can benefit of satellite imagery to fulfil their obligations and implement cost-effectively REDD and other forest projects. Examples will come from operational projects, including, but not limited to:
- The REDD Basin Congo initiative (partnership between Astrium and French Development Agency), aiming to deliver Congo Basin countries with a comprehensive range of information products including archive and recent SPOT images over rain forest, country-wide reference maps and IPCC & VCS compliant baseline maps over some provinces (forest area change and benchmark forest map).
- The Developpp.de initiative with a partnership between Astrium and the German International Cooperation Agency (GIZ) in Ghana to improve the national MRV capabilities in using TerraSarX data.
- Countries which rely upon SPOT Direct Receiving capabilities to establish their national forest monitoring system.