Open Foris: FAO in collaboration with Google developing innovative technical solutions for catalysing climate action

Innovative open-source solutions that help countries generate critical forest and land cover information in their efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Accurate information is critical for managing natural resources sustainably. With support from NICFI, BMU-IKI, Finland and UN-REDD, FAO has developed Open Foris for innovative forest and land monitoring, conceived in 2012 to meet the urgent need for accurate yet cost-effective monitoring and reporting of forest and land cover. The signing of an agreement with Google in 2015 marked a turning point for Open Foris, accelerating innovation that today is enabling over 30,000 people across 180 countries to collect, analyse and report critical forest and land data in their efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

One significant impact of Open Foris has been its use in creating country data by 70% of the 50 countries that have submitted REDD+ reports (Forest Reference Levels and REDD+ results) to the UNFCCC. For many countries this is the first time detailed forest data have been reported internationally, representing a major step forward toward transparent forest data, and laying the groundwork for the transition to the Enhanced Transparency Framework of the Paris Agreement. Open Foris’ easy to use, open and transparent tools and platforms have been catalytic in this progress. As of mid-2020, 12 countries have reported emission reductions/enhancements to the UNFCCC through their REDD+ technical Annex, representing 8.87 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is an important contribution to climate change mitigation, and is enabling the flow of results based finance from the Green Climate Fund, which is triggering accelerated forest and climate action.

Open Foris includes:

Collect

Collect provides a fast, easy way to set up a survey with a user-friendly interface. It acts as the main entry point for setting up a field inventory in terms of survey design and data management. Survey design is highly configurable with multiple data types and languages possible, data entry is fast, and the software allows multiple users to collaborate on surveys and datasets.

• The Democratic Republic of the Congo has used Open Foris Collect to manage the data collected from their National Forest Inventory (NFI), setting validation rules — such as maximum tree diameters — to minimise error. Collect has been used in this way for two iterations of NFI in DRC.

Collect Mobile

Once the survey is set up in Collect, it’s time to go to the field and collect data, and Collect Mobile is there to make this easier than ever. Collect Mobile is an app which you can install on any Android device. It enables fast and easy data input with instant error-warnings to help you avoid error and automated geolocation using your device’s GPS receiver. Although developed to eliminate the need for paper-based data collection for National Forest Inventory, Collect Mobile can be used for any other field data collection exercise such as dairy industry data collection in Kazakhstan and is widely used for socio-economic data collection.

• The Forest Department of Myanmar has used Collect Mobile to replace paper field forms for its NFI since 2017. Collect Mobile has been used by field crews to collect data from forest plots in central and southern Myanmar, in forests as diverse as upland and mangroves. Forest inventory will now be rolled out at a national scale using a conflict sensitive approach.

Forest inventory is sometimes physically challenging — here foresters of the Forest Department of Myanmar take measurements on a steep slope having made their way through thick vegetation in a bamboo forest. Having a quick and easy way to input and save your data is very valuable in the field — furnished by Collect Mobile and supported by the other Open Foris tools. Image copyright Marco Piazza FAO.

Calc

Once you have your data recorded, it’s time for analysis, and Calc makes this step practicable. Drawing upon one of the main tools of data scientists — R programming — Calc enables users to analyse and visualize complex datasets by way of a user friendly interface, to produce results, graphics and tables in a transparent manner which can be verified.

• In preparation for its NFI, technicians in Cambodia have been trained in the use of Calc, and tree allometric equations have been developed and incorporated to Calc as a custom module for use in the country’s NFI.

During a training on Open Foris Calc in Lima, Peru participants manipulate and visualise large datasets easily, and obtain results such as those shown projected. Such results enable modelling and assessment of biomass and carbon change across a landscape, essential for protecting ecosystems and mitigating climate change. Image copyright Open Foris.

Collect Earth

Collect Earth is an innovative land assessment and monitoring tool using freely available satellite imagery in conjunction with Google Earth, Bing Maps, and Google Earth Engine. Collect Earth enables users to classify and monitor changes easily by applying customizable forms tailored to country circumstances as well as international guidance such as that of the IPCC. It has been instrumental in FAO’s Global Drylands Assessment and the monitoring of Africa’s Great Green Wall. Collect Earth maintenance and development is funded by BMU-IKI.

• Since 2015 many trainings have been held in countries in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa on assessing drylands using Collect Earth, as part of the Global Drylands Assessment — providing critical baseline data for the Great Green Wall initiative. A progress report on the Great Green Wall was launched yesterday.

Participants pose for a photo after a training in Dakar, Senegal on using Collect Earth to assess drylands. Senegal has planted over 11 million trees since 2007, as part of the Great Green Wall, the pan-African effort to limit desertification. Image copyright Open Foris.

Participants of a Collect Earth mapathon, held in Lucknow, India in collaboration with the World Resources Institute. By using Collect Earth, this team was able to collect data from visually interpreting almost 14,000 plots in just 6 days! Collect Earth makes analyses powerful by bringing together scientists and citizens, people that know the landscape on the ground and remote sensing experts, enabling surveys to be completed in record time. Image copyright Open Foris.

Collect Earth Online

Developed in collaboration with NASA’s SERVIR program, Collect Earth Online is a next generation cloud-based crowd-sourcing platform for visual interpretation of satellite images. This means that scientists and citizens can collaborate in real time on image interpretation, which makes for powerful and fast analyses.

• In Chile, Collect Earth Online has been used to collect data for the Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use sector of the national Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which underpins reporting to the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.

SEPAL

SEPAL provides anyone, anywhere with unparalleled access to satellite data and supercomputing power from their web browser and mobile phone through an easy to use interface. SEPAL leverages the power of Google Earth Engine, and is being used for land monitoring and change detection, including for deforestation, forest degradation, forest fire, monitoring of peatlands, agricultural land and to support emergency efforts in refugee camps. SEPAL enabled spatial data generation for REDD+ reporting for the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Bhutan, Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Myanmar, Laos, Ecuador, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Thailand, Nigeria. SEPAL has also enabled the measurement and reporting of degradation in Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, and Ethiopia. SEPAL maintenance and development is funded by NICFI.

• Ecuador is the first country to develop its own installation of SEPAL, tailored to its needs, thanks to a collaboration between Ecuador, FAO, and the German development bank (KfW). The installation includes an early-warning system for deforestation and degradation. In 2019, Ecuador was the second country in the world to receive payment from the GCF for REDD+ results for reducing deforestation. Ecuador is a pioneer of both REDD+ and in the use of SEPAL.

Using SEPAL, land cover change has been detected in Uganda. Here, deforestation in red and forest degradation in yellow are shown eating away at a forest over the period 2018–2019. This type of analysis, which can show change almost from one day to another and with a resolution in metres, can enable a near-real time understanding of change dynamics and drivers, and rapid and targeted response of the people managing forests. Image copyright FAO.

As of September 2020, Open Foris tools:

• Have over 30,000 users from 180 countries
• Have been used in 25 National Forest Inventories and by 70% of the 50 REDD+ country submissions to the UNFCCC
• Are being used to monitor restoration — the tools were used to estimate global tree restoration potential in an influential paper in Science in 2019 and are being used to monitor the Great Green Wall — and will contribute to efforts to monitor the upcoming UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration
• Are catalysing collaboration and partnerships — between people and institutions, such as NASA, JAXA, Planet Labs, in collaboration with countries.

Open Foris tools and platforms are free and open-source, removing software dependencies, and ensuring transparency. In 2020 two new platforms will be added to Open Foris: Earth Map and Arena.

Earth Map, developed in partnership with Google Earth Outreach with funding from BMU-IKI, provides a simple drop-down menu interface to examine local climate data and other variables such as vegetation changes anywhere in the world.

Open Foris Arena, under development with funding from UN-REDD, will streamline and improve data collection and analysis in an integrated cloud-based environment (combining Collect and Calc) and will offer templates and new features designed to make using Open Foris tools even easier.

In collaboration with the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, work is underway to make Open Foris even more accessible through advanced training materials for autonomous application of Open Foris for critical forest and land cover data provision.

Open Foris is catalysing progress in land monitoring around the globe, by lowering costs, removing dependencies and technical barriers, powering collaboration and enhancing the transparency and accuracy of forest and land cover information, which is fundamental to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.

If you’d like to know more or want to use the software, visit www.openforis.org

Two foresters of the Myanmar Forest Department fill in their data quickly on Open Foris Collect Mobile while sheltering under an umbrella in the forest during one of the frequent tropical downpours. Collect Mobile can access the tablet’s GPS and camera, storing photos and coordinates along with other field measurements all in one place. Image copyright Marco Piazza FAO.

This article was written by Emily Donegan, Lauri Vesa, Alfonso Sánchez-Paus Díaz and Julian Fox, who all work at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).