Session Information
| Session | Poster Session | | Date | Monday (2008-04-07) | | Time | 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM | | Room | Grand Terrace |
Presentation Information
| Presenter | Peter Potapov | | Title | Mapping and monitoring the world’s intact forest landscapes by remote sensing | | Affiliation | Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence, SDSU | | Authors | Peter Potapov, Svetlana Turubanova, Maxim Dubinin, Lars Laestadius, Aleksey Yaroshenko, Dmitry Aksenov | | Keywords | Anthropogenic disturbance, Fragmentation, Intactness, Landsat, World forests | | Presentation Type | Poster | Abstract:
Protection of large natural forest landscapes is a highly important task recognized within international strategic initiatives and critical for the protection of forest biodiversity, to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and to stimulate sustainable forestry management practice. We introduce a new approach for assessing human influence in forest landscapes at the global scale. The essence of this approach is the use of high spatial resolution satellite data (Landsat TM and ETM+) and fine-scale maps to establish and monitor a baseline boundary of Intact Forest Landscapes (IFL) - patches of natural ecosystems within the forest zone, not fragmented by transport infrastructure, without any signs of significant human activity and big enough that all of its biodiversity, including viable populations of wide-ranging species, can be maintained. Identified world’s IFL area for year 2000/01 make up 23.4 percent of the forest zone (area with a tree canopy density above 20%), or 13.1 million km2. Most of this area is in closed forests (69.3%), while the remainder consists of open forests and woodlands (16.4%), and non-forest ecosystems (14.3%). The global distribution of IFL reflects differences in history and intensity of economic development. In the boreal regions, most of the remaining IFL lie on the far north and in mountainous areas, i.e. beyond the limits of economic accessibility. In tropical regions, IFL are found mainly in the large tropical forests of the Amazon basin, the Congo basin, and Borneo and New Guinea islands. Only 7.9% of the world’s IFL area is strictly protected (IUCN categories I – III). We monitored IFL in Northern European Russia and in tropical Africa and Madagascar during the period between 2000/01 and 2005/7. Total area under IFL decreased by 459 km2 (1.49%) in Northern European Russia and 3571 km2 (3.56%) in Africa. In both regions the main cause of IFL area loss was logging operations and fragmentation by associated road building. The combined world IFL map and the proposed monitoring approach presented here form a vital component of a general strategy for nature conservation at the global and regional scales. |
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