The JRC-ESA TREES Project Current activities, results and future plans

Monitoring changes in the tropical forests

Monitoring change in the forests of the tropical belt presents a formidable yet vital challenge for remote sensing. In order to address this issue a joint project between the Joint Research Centre and the European Space Agency was initiated in 1991 entitled the TREES Project  : Tropical Ecosystem Environment observation by Satellite.
Its three main objectives are  :

• the development of techniques for a global tropical forest inventory using AVHRR and ERS-1 as the main sources of data supplemented by high resolution optical data   ;
• the development of techniques for the detection and monitoring of the active deforestation areas  ; measurement of deforestation rates in critical areas   ;
• the development of a comprehensive Tropical Forest Information System to support the modelling of tropical deforestation dynamics.

The TREES project is oriented towards the study of tropical forest dynamics at regional to global scales using remote sensing techniques.

Tropical forest maps and views

This section presents the main and most recent results of the TREES project  :

• TREES 1 km forest classification over the Tropics

• ERS-1 SAR Mosaic over Central Africa

Future plans  : a Deforestation Monitoring System

The developments on the joint use of low and high resolution data sets as well as the systematic conduct of the classification using the Tropical Forest Information System will allow to initiate an operational deforestation monitoring system : TREES II.

The different steps towards the development of such an preoperational system are :

• the continuation of the pan-tropical AVHRR Collection  ;
  
• research methodologies will be tested on selected hot-spots areas where rapid change is taking place, integrating biomass burning information into the analysis ( FIRE Project )  ;;
  
• the assessment of the existing and planned high/low resolution remote sensing data sources (including ERS, SPOT, ATSR-2 and Vegetation) and comparative study about their relevance and usefulness for the forthcoming phase ;
  
• the Tropical Forest Information System feeding and development.

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Contacts at the JRC:

Jean-Paul MALINGREAU - TREES General Coordinator
E-mail : jean-paul.malingreau@jrc.it
Frédéric ACHARD - TREES Optical Coordinator
E-mail : frederic.achard@jrc.it
Gianfranco De GRANDI - TREES Radar Coordinator
E-mail : gianfranco.degrandi@jrc.it

Monitoring of Tropical Vegetation Unit
Institute of Remote Sensing Applications
Joint Research Centre, TP 440
21020 Ispra (VA) - Italy
Fax : +39 332 789073