Christelle Vancutsem

Commission Joint Research Center, Ispra · Directorate on Sustainable Resources - Nature Conservation and Observations Unit

This report aims to give an overview of the recent forest cover changes in the Amazon region, and furthermore, for Brazil, the country with the largest share of the Amazon to put these changes into a political and institutional perspective. Consistent data specifically for monitoring forest degradation of the Amazon, caused mainly by forest fires a...

The globally important carbon sink of intact, old-growth tropical humid forests is declining because of climate change, deforestation and degradation from fire and logging1–3. Recovering tropical secondary and degraded forests now cover about 10% of the tropical forest area⁴, but how much carbon they accumulate remains uncertain. Here we quantify t...

In the Amazon, deforestation and climate change lead to increased vulnerability to forest degradation, threatening its existing carbon stocks and its capacity as a carbon sink. We use satellite L‐Band Vegetation Optical Depth (L‐VOD) data that provide an integrated (top‐down) estimate of biomass carbon to track changes over 2011–2019. Because the s...

The report is a 2021 update of last year's report on the deforestation and forest degradation 2020 in the Amazon region. It presents regional and national forest disturbance statistics based on TMF data, provided by the Joint Research Centre of the European Comission. In addition, it compares TMF data 2021 with INPE-PRODES, INPE-DETER data and give...

Tropical forests are disappearing at an alarming rate due to human activities. Here, we provide spatial models of deforestation in 92 countries covering all the tropical moist forests in the world. Our results question the global effectiveness of protected areas in curbing deforestation and allow reinterpreting the impact of roads on deforestation...

Este relatório comunica as estatísticas de desmatamento e degradação florestal 2002-2020 para a floresta tropical nos países sul-americanos da região amazônica, com base no novo conjunto de dados JRC Tropical Moist Forest (JRC-TMF). Além disso, o relatório descreve a dinâmica do desmatamento e degradação florestal na região, enfatizando vários tipo...

La degradación de los bosques amazónicos debe incorporarse a la agenda de la COP26 (traducción)

A degradação da floresta amazônica deve ser incorporada à agenda da COP26 (Tradução)

Free-to-read at: https://rdcu.be/cw7ua; Portuguese and Spanish versions of this paper are provided at: https://github.com/celsohlsj/ngeo_correspondence

This report aims to communicate the statistics of deforestation and forest degradation 2002-2020 for the rainforest in the South American countries of the Amazon region, based on the new JRC Tropical Moist Forest (JRC-TMF) dataset. In addition, the report describes the dynamics of deforestation and forest degradation in the region, while putting an...

Accurate characterization of tropical moist forest changes is needed to support conservation policies and to quantify their contribution to global carbon fluxes more effectively. We document, at pantropical scale, the extent and changes (degradation, deforestation, and recovery) of these forests over the past three decades. We estimate that 17% of...

Deforestation is the primary driver of forest carbon loss in tropical forests. Nevertheless, forest fragmentation-induced carbon loss is poorly studied and not implicitly included in the policies of reductions in carbon emissions in the tropics. Here, we used an innovative remote sensing approach to estimate for the first time the carbon loss due t...

Deforestation is the primary driver of carbon losses in tropical forests, but it does not operate alone. Forest fragmentation, a resulting feature of the deforestation process, promotes indirect carbon losses induced by edge effect. This process is not implicitly considered by policies for reducing carbon emissions in the tropics. Here, we used a r...

Accurate characterization of the tropical moist forests changes is needed to support conservation policies and to better quantify their contribution to global carbon fluxes. We document - at pantropical scale - the extent of these forests and their changes (degradation, deforestation and recovery) over the last three decades. We estimate that 17% o...

This study presents an approach to forest canopy disturbance monitoring in evergreen forests in continental Southeast Asia, based on temporal differences of a modified normalized burn ratio (NBR) vegetation index. We generate NBR values from each available Landsat 8 scene of a given period. A step of 'self-referencing' normalizes the NBR values, la...

This study investigates how two existing pan-tropical above-ground biomass (AGB) maps (Saatchi 2011, Baccini 2012) can be combined to derive forest ecosystem specific carbon estimates. Several data-fusion models which combine these AGB maps according to their local correlations with independent datasets such as the spectral bands of SPOT VEGETATION...

Abstract

Using an R2-weighted data-fusion model two existing above-ground biomass (AGB) maps (Saatchi and Baccini) are combined to derive improved AGB estimates for the Amazon biome. Advantage of this methodology is the increased transparency to hitherto existing approaches and the fact that no AGB reference datasets are necessary for the implementation. In...

A new 1 km global IIASA-IFPRI cropland percentage map for the baseline year 2005 has been developed which integrates a number of individual cropland maps at global to regional to national scales. The individual map products include existing global land cover maps such as GlobCover 2005 and MODIS v.5, regional maps such as AFRICOVER and national map...

Monitoring the start of the crop season in Sahel provides decision makers with valuable information for an early assessment of potential production and food security threats. Presently, the most common method for the estimation of sowing dates in West African countries consists of applying given thresholds on rainfall estimations. However, the coar...

In the face of global population growth and the uneven distribution of water supply, a better knowledge of the spatial and temporal distribution of surface water resources is critical. Remote sensing provides a synoptic view of ongoing processes, which addresses the intricate nature of water surfaces and allows an assessment of the pressures placed...

Agricultural monitoring is a major concern to economies largely based on agriculture like Uruguay. In order to improve crop yield forecasts, identification of crop types must be performed early in the planting season. However, this task is generally difficult because of the spatial heterogeneity of the landscape, the different crop cycles, the spec...

Satellite-derived time series of the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (fAPAR) are widely used to monitor vegetation dynamics and to detect vegetation anomalies. Several global data sets are available for this purpose. They are produced using different algorithms and/or satellite sensors. This paper compares and analyzes thre...

Food security is a key global concern. By 2050, the global population will exceed 9 billion, and a 50% increase in annual agricultural output will be required to keep up with demand. There are significant additional pressures on existing agricultural land through increased competition from the biofuel sector and the need to elevate feed production,...

Mapping cropland areas is of great interest in diverse fields, from crop monitoring to climate change and food security. Recognizing the value of a reliable and harmonized crop mask that entirely covers the African continent, the objectives of this study were to (i) consolidate the best existing land cover/land use datasets, (ii) adapt the Land Cov...

The length of the crop season is a major determinant of yields in Sahel. Based on green-up onset detection derived from MODIS time series, this paper proposes a new methodology for the estimation of the sowing dates. It builds upon a novel stochastic model that translates vegetation onset detections around villages into sowing probabilities. Result...

Rainfall and temperature are two of the major factors triggering malaria epidemics in warm semi-arid (desert-fringe) and high altitude (highland-fringe) epidemic risk areas. The ability of the mosquitoes to transmit Plasmodium spp. is dependent upon a series of biological features generally referred to as vectorial capacity. In this study, the vect...

Mapping cropland areas in a dynamic way is of great interest to successfully monitor agricultural areas and food security. Existing cropland masks are either too coarse or inaccurate or are limited in spatial coverage. This study aims at developing a method for dynamic mapping of cropland areas in Sub-Saharan Africa and at producing a multi-annual...

The Desert Locust (Schistocerca gregaria) is the most feared of all the locusts worldwide. Satellite imagery can provide a continuous overview of ecological conditions (i.e., vegetation, soil moisture) suitable for the Desert Locust at the continental scale and in near real time. To monitor green vegetation, most remote sensing techniques are based...

This study proposes a methodology to infer maximum air temperature from space using observations from polar orbiting satellite MODIS. A previous study showed that minimum Land Surface Temperature (LST) derived from MODIS night-time images provides a good surrogate for minimum air temperature while the retrieval of maximum air temperature is less st...

The estimation of near surface air temperature (Ta) is useful for a wide range of applications such as agriculture, climate related diseases and climate change studies. Air temperature is commonly obtained from synoptic measurements in weather stations. In Africa, the spatial distribution of weather stations is often limited and the dissemination o...

Natural disturbances (e.g., insect defoliation, extreme weather events) and anthropogenic disturbances (e.g., land use change) can affect terrestrial carbon budgets over a wide range of spatial scales, from the size of an individual tree to ~100 km or more. In particular, many disturbances occur on finer spatial scales than those typically simulate...

The need for quantitative and accurate information to characterize the state and evolution of vegetation types at a national scale is widely recognized. This type of information is crucial for the Democratic Republic of Congo, which contains the majority of the tropical forest cover of Central Africa and a large diversity of habitats. In spite of r...

Temporal syntheses of surface reflectance are one of the most common data products from high temporal resolution instruments. Such an image combination procedure is sensitive to several control parameters, including the compositing period. Unfortunately, these choices usually rely on a unique and global solution delivered by the data provider to en...

The ESA-GlobCover initiative has delivered to the international community the very first 300 m global land cover map for 2005. This product is derived from 40 terabytes of imagery acquired by Envisat's MERIS instrument for the period from December 2004 to June 2006. This product has been successfully validated by an independent network of internati...

The GlobCover project supported by ESA has developed an operational service dedicated to the generation of global land cover maps through an automated classification of MERIS FRS time series. This paper reports the independent accuracy assessment of the global GlobCover product as the first global exercise implemented according to the CEOS Land Pro...

Time series acquired from environmental satellites provide important information for the monitoring of earth surfaces. However, their use requires the application of various processes such as the compositing, i.e. the combination of several observations within a given period in order to produce consistent and cloud-free temporal syntheses. Given...

Compositing has long been used to produce complete, cloud-free images over large areas. Several compositing methods have been developed and implemented for global time series, and each method corrects for angular effects and atmospheric variations differently. This study assesses the performance of three compositing methods on real and simulated me...

Various compositing criteria have been proposed to produce cloud‐free images from optical time series. However, they often favour specific atmospheric and geometric conditions, which may cause serious inconsistencies in the syntheses. Algorithms including BRDF normalization minimize variations induced by the anisotropy of the target. However, their...

The Globcover initiative comprises the development and demonstration of a service that in first instance produces a global land cover map for year 2005/2006. Globcover uses MERIS fine resolution (300 m) mode data acquired between mid 2005 and mid 2006 and, for maximum user benefit, the thematic legend is compatible with the UN land cover classifica...

The objective of the ESA GLOBCOVER initiative is to develop a service which in its first instance will produce a 300 m global land-cover map for the year 2005, using as its main source FRS (full resolution (300m) full swath) data acquired over the year 2005 by the MERIS sensor on-board ENVISAT. The overall production chain contains 4 elements: Prep...

The objective of the ESA GLOBCOVER initiative is to develop a service which, in its first instance, will produce a 300 m global land-cover map, using as its main source ENVISAT-MERIS full resolution data acquired over the year 2005. The overall project includes the development of the pre-processing and classification chain, the production and the v...

High temporal resolution satellites, such as VEGETATION provide multiple images of the same site over short periods of time. Time series constituted of these individual images are characterised by a lack of signal consistency since measured radiance generally result from various cloudiness, atmospheric and geometric conditions. To reduce the relate...