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Russian Greenpeace specialists believe that only a bit more than 1/5 of the world forest can be rated as intact forests. About 30% of all intact forests are concentrated in the humid tropics –the Congo and the Amazon Rivers basins, big islands in the Pacific Ocean (Malay Archipelago and the New Guiney Island) in the territory of 9 countries: Brazil, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guiney, Central African Republic, Indonesia, Papua-New Guiney. Ilona Zhuravleva, Russian Greenpeace GIS Project Manager, shared the results of the research when speaking at the 5th International Conference “Earth from space – most effective solutions” on December 1.
In early 2000 Greenpeace and some other ecological NGOs started to map large forests. Unbroken expanse of natural ecosystems within the zone of current forest extent, showing no signs of significant human activity and large enough that all native biodiversity, including viable populations of wide-ranging species, could be maintained are considered intact forest landscapes (IFL).
IFL research was carried out for two periods (2000-2005 and 2005-2010) on the basis of Landsat 7 space images and additional images, i.e., cloudless mosaics (for the Congo River basin), Terra/Aster (Indonesia, Papua-New Guiney), PRODES (Brazil).
Total area of tropical IFLs in 2010 was about 3,711,000 km2 that is equal to Ѕ Australia. 63% of them were concentrated in Brazil, 24% in the Congo basin, 13% in Indonesia and PNG. IFL loss over the period of 2000-20 10 in absolute figures was 234,700 km2 that is a bit more than the area of Israel. Alterations of intact forest take place at different rate in different countries, but in general in the tropical belt the forest area reduces at an average rate of 0.5% per year, stated Ilona Zhuravleva.
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5th International Conference “Earth from Space – the Most Effective Solutions” will be held on November 29 – December 1, 2011 in Moscow Region “Vatutinki” resort hotel. The conference is expected to be attended by over 400 specialists from 25 world countries – experts in space imagery, specialists in manufacturing and operation of Earth satellites, representatives of public authorities, scientific and educational entities, introducing modern technology of space monitoring into their practices. Conference organizers are ScanEx Research & Development Center, “Earth from Space” Association and NGO Transparent World.
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