As the 18th Commonwealth Forestry Conference is about to begin in Edinburgh, DMCii has launched a new service specifically tailored to help in the fight to conserve global forests. DMCii’s Global Forest Monitoring service uses satellite imagery to produce easily-understood maps of forest cover change. Uniquely, the service’s wide-area forest surveys can be updated annually, monthly – or more often still for areas judged most at risk – delivering the timely data necessary for operational management.This week’s Commonwealth Forestry Conference has the theme of restoring the Commonwealth’s forests. Together the 54 states of the Commonwealth are home to 800 million hectares of forest, representing 20% of the world’s remaining trees. The Conference is discussing conserving current forested areas and restoring lost forests as a means of benefiting regional habitats and communities – as well as tackling global climate change.The world’s forests form a significant stock of carbon, which is being released as CO2 as forests are impacted by human intervention. The tropical rainforests hold 80% of forest carbon and the destruction of these is responsible for around 20% of anthropogenic carbon emissions. Among the subjects under discussion during the Conference is an UN-led initiative called REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), which aims to place a value on intact forests by paying governments to prevent their destruction. Read More
