SERVIR releases satellite-based study of deforestation in Belize E-Mail

August 20, 2010 - Panama City, Panama - A recent USAID-funded study conducted by CATHALAC, NASA and Belize’s Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment demonstrates the utility of cutting-edge satellite technologies in mapping the forest resources of the biodiversity-rich Central American nation of Belize.

Supported by USAID in the context of the Regional Visualization & Monitoring System (SERVIR), the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC) and NASA recently completed “Forest Cover and Deforestation in Belize: 1980-2010,” a thirty-year study of forest cover change and deforestation in Central America’s northernmost nation. The study was done in collaboration with the Government of Belize’s Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, the federal entity responsible for managing forests and public lands in the nation recognized as having the highest percentage of forest cover in Mesoamerica.

Based on analysis of imagery for 1980, 1989, 1994, 2000, 2004, and 2010 – from the Landsat series of satellites managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey – the validated, national-level assessment indicates that Belize’s forest cover has declined from 75.9% in 1980 to 62.7% as of late February 2010. Average annual deforestation was estimated at 0.6%, equaling the clearing of some 24,835 acres (9,982 hectares) of forest per year. Of significance is the study’s illustrating that protected areas have been extremely effective in conserving forests, with only a small percent of forests within protected areas being detected as cleared within the past thirty years, compared to a quarter of forests outside of protected areas being cleared in that period. 

 Belize, forest, deforestation, land cover, SERVIR, redd  Belize, forest, deforestation, land cover, SERVIR, redd

   
The study demonstrates SERVIR’s capacities for rapidly converting satellite data into information. While the assessment utilized an exhaustive 27 gigabytes (27GB) of imagery and intermediate outputs which required significant computational resources, the entire study was completed in just four months, including the analysis of pre-collected field data to “ground truth” the outputs. It is also the first time in Belize’s history that such an assessment has been completed in the same year the imagery was acquired. Similar studies conducted in neighboring countries have generally taken over a year to conduct, and have not covered as broad a timescale as the 30-year, six time-step study completed for Belize. The study’s technical report fully elaborates the methodology used, as well as providing access to the “spectral signature” libraries developed which would facilitate extending the study.

The study was also presented two weeks ago in Belize City at a meeting of a regional technical committee on biodiversity, established in the context of the Central American Integration System, SICA. The study was well received by the meeting’s representatives, who likewise indicated the need for similar national-level studies to be conducted in their own countries. This work also complements a regional-level study CATHALAC is currently undertaking of land cover change across all of Central America, funded by the European Commission. Representatives of the Government of Belize have expressed interest in using this study as an input to international reporting for a range of commitments ranging from the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to the emerging Reducing Emissions from Deforestation & Forest Degradation (REDD) initiative. Making use of the TROPICARMS 2.0 system implemented by CATHALAC, the report also estimates Belize’s current stock of forest carbon – an important requirement of REDD.

The only previous study of deforestation in Belize was a USAID-funded study in 1996. The current study builds on SERVIR, a platform for monitoring and forecasting Mesoamerica’s land surface, oceans, and atmosphere. “Forest Cover and Deforestation in Belize: 1980-2010” can be found online at: http://www.servir.net/servir_bz_forest_cover_1980-2010.pdf .