User-Friendly Forest-Monitoring Technology

Thursday, December 10 2009

Forest-monitoring technology developed by scientists at Carnegie Institute’s Department of Global Ecology combines free satellite imagery and powerful analytical methods into an easy-to-use, desktop software package called CLASlite. The team announced its new web site for CLASlite users today, at the Copenhagen climate meetings.

Tropical forest destruction accounts for about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Quantifying these emissions has not been easy, especially for tropical nations. So far, 70 government, non-government, and academic organizations in five countries have adopted CLASlite.

To support international policy discussions and solve on-the-ground needs for forest monitoring, CLASlite is being rapidly disseminated through a tailored, demand-driven technology transfer to government, academic, and non-government institutions of the Andes and Amazon regions.

“We’re providing CLASlite to support the U.N. program for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation and other tropical forest monitoring efforts,” said Greg Asner, lead scientist for the CLASlite project. “My team has already trained more than 240 users from 70 organizations in the Andes-Amazon region, and we will do more workshops in 2010.”