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NEA-FOREST |
| Forest Monitoring for Greenhouse Gas Information in North-eastern Asia |
| Keywords |
climate change, forest monitoring, NPP, forest fires |
Project Objectives
The project aims to monitor the growth state and its difference in evolution compared to other periods of boreal forests in North-eastern Asia and the occurrence of fires. The service consists of a web-based application capable of updating the state of the forest and the extent of forest fires through vegetation indices such as Net Primary Productivity (NPP), NPP differences, burnt areas and burnt areas history. To this end, the proposed service will take advantage of the GlobSeries project data, namely GlobCarbon and GlobCover.
Methodology
To meet these objectives, the project will:
- simulate the boreal forest growth status and density by computing the vegetation index NPP from fAPAR for the period 1998-2007,
- analyse using statistical approach the evolution of NPP by comparing the indices between the current year, the reference year 2000 and the average year
- estimate the burnt area and analyse the burnt area history,
- establish a web service based on the open source MapSever technology which can display the service products under the format of “geographic image map”. The web service will be able to display the evolution of these vegetation indicators under the format of graphs.
(Expected) Results
Following service products will be generated in both image and database formats over the region of interest:
- NPP (Net Primary Production),
- differences of NPP compared to the average year (period 1998 till 2007) and to the reference year 2000
- the BAE (Burnt Area Estimates) and the burnt area history.
A web-based application allows consultation of these products and information up-dateable on a 10 daily basis. For demonstration purpose, the project website (http://neaforest.vgt.vito.be) contains three sections with information for the period 1998 till 2007:
- Forest monitoring - "image viewer" enables to view the most recent forest growth state and vegetation density, as well as to map the status change of the forests in comparison with the ten year average or a reference year.
- Forest monitoring – "graphs (also called database viewer)" displays forest vegetation dynamics over a period of time, for a specific land cover class within a certain spatial unit.
- Forest Monitoring – "regional NPP statistics" offers tools to assess the total annual NPP of forests for each region.
VITO Contribution
VITO is the only implementation organisation for this project. The project has been elaborated and funded upon the requirement stated by the two end-user organisations:
- the Centre for Marginal Land-Affairs for North-eastern Asia hosted by the Heilongjiang Meteorological Bureau (MLAP)
- United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Illustration
Example of the web application showing the NPP compared relatively to the long term average for the last dekad of July 2009.
