GIS, Remote Sensing and Forest Inventory

New technologies (internet, satellites, drones, etc.) have revolutionised our methods and tools for diagnosis and monitoring in rural areas, and we are discovering new features every day! The challenge now is to harness progress and make it accessible and useful to as many people as possible.

Issues

The production of free satellite data with good spatial resolution and high repeatability (e.g. from Landsat or Sentinel) has exploded in recent years, facilitating the production of maps of land use and land use change. However, countries in the South, particularly in Africa, still face certain obstacles in using them: bandwidth is still often insufficient or Internet access is too expensive to download images, implying the use of adapted tools for online viewing (webviewing) and online processing (webmapping) limited or expensive access to high-resolution images (e.g. from satellites – such as QuickBird or WorldView – or drones) to calibrate ex ante processing or validate results ex post; sometimes limited logistical and human capacities to produce maps locally, whether from data acquired by GPS in the field or from remote sensing…Finally, and in general, the fields of possibility are immense but often largely under-exploited, due to a lack of knowledge on the part of decision-makers about the potential of these new technologies and the insufficient adaptation of tools and methods to local specificities.

Our services

The use of mapping and remote sensing tools is transversal to all our activities, whether it is to develop forest maps and inventories, to model deforestation processes, to monitor production flows in agricultural sectors, etc. We actively follow innovative initiatives, methods and tools for monitoring land and forest degradation (e.g. ReCaREDD, SilvaCarbon, Open Foris, etc.), habitat and biodiversity monitoring (e.g. GLAD), monitoring of 0-deforestation agricultural value chains (e.g. Starling, Agrice/Agromex, Farmforce, Field Connect, etc.), monitoring of fuelwood supply and demand in urban supply basins (e.g. WISDOM); etc. We are thus able to provide tailor-made support, taking into account local needs and human and logistical capacities, and relevant innovations at the international level. Wherever possible, we give priority to “doing it” and support local actors in taking ownership and using methods and tools, through training and experimentation on pilot actions.