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New Mapping Initiative Provides Most Accurate Picture Yet of Threatened State of World's Remaining Boreal ForestsAugust 30, 2002 - Johannesburg, South Africa -- Preliminary results of a new project to accurately map the world’s remaining northern or boreal forests with sophisticated satellite data indicate that the long-thought endless sea of unbroken wilderness is fast becoming a myth. The project, called the Pan-Boreal Mapping Initiative, was launched today during the World Summit on Sustainable Development with the release of preliminary results of high resolution satellite data analysis that for the first time will provide a detailed and highly accurate baseline for monitoring changes in the world’s remaining intact boreal forests. The Pan-Boreal Mapping Initiative is the latest project of Global Forest Watch, an international effort to map the condition, development threats, and key actors in the world’s remaining forests. The initiative has brought together experts from five boreal countries: Russia, Finland, Sweden, Canada, and the US. "Global Forest Watch is a good example of a multilateral approach to solving environmental issues," said Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, host organization of the Global Forest Watch. "Forest discussion at WSSD is primarily focused on initiatives in less developed countries in the South. A good outcome at WSSD will advance the implementation of protection and sustainable development throughout the world’s forests -- including in the North. This initiative will help raise awareness of the forgotten boreal which covers one third of the world’s forest area." "In the 10 years after the 1992 Earth Summit, the international community has focused its efforts on tracking deforestation in the Southern Hemisphere. This initiative fills an important void. It will allow us to begin to accurately measure the rate and extent of ecological changes in the boreal north," said Lars Laestadius, Project Manager for Global Forest Watch. About 50% of the world’s remaining intact forests are boreal. A broad belt of mainly coniferous trees, boreal forests are a mosaic of forestland, rivers, lakes, and wetlands that lie between the arctic tundra to the north and the temperate forests to the south. Intact boreal forest landscapes are large natural wildlands (at least 50,000 hectares or 123,500 acres) unaffected by modern, industrial land use. They remain intact mostly because of such factors as lack of mineral resources, poor soils, difficult terrain and large distances from markets. Most are in the far north, where growth is slow and recovery time is measured in centuries. The most attractive boreal forests have either been converted or logged. "Once destroyed, naturalness cannot be artificially restored," said Dmitry Aksenov, an ecologist with the Socio-Ecological Union International in Moscow and technical coordinator of the new project. "If you do not map it, you can’t manage it." Intact boreal forest landscapes offer exceptional conservation opportunities. They serve as reference points to assess change in the surrounding managed landscapes and provide critically important habitat and other ecological services including carbon storage. They are also home to many indigenous peoples and cultures. "Land use planning for these areas should be based on the precautionary approach to prevent unnecessary degradation," said Peter Lee, a biologist and coordinator of Global Forest Watch Canada. "Maps like the one we are releasing today provide the information societies need to make careful choices about how forests are managed and protected." Mapping intact boreal forests takes a lot of detective work. GFW partners first analyze topographic maps and exclude obviously human-disturbed areas including urban areas and roads. Then they examine detailed satellite images (about 15,000 images, dating from 1999 to 2002, have been acquired so far) to look for additional signs of human impact including agriculture, logging, mining, and oil and gas development. Finally, precise boundaries are drawn. Field visits in Russia, Finland and Sweden have been made to verify satellite image interpretation and map accuracy. "Once this phase is finalized we want to take these efforts a step further," said Linda Delgado, co-Director of Global Forest Watch. "Our work in Russia is yielding maps so detailed that individual forest management units can be overlaid with remaining intact forest. IKEA, a major international home furnishing company, is using these maps in the field to avoid purchasing wood from intact forests. This is the kind of forest information that will increase transparency and accountability and help stakeholders make better informed forest management decisions." Review InformationThis map is open for review until 1 November, 2002. All contributions are welcome. For more information, please contact us at gfw@wri.org or: Global Forest Watch Data SourcesTopographical maps and digital roads data were used to establish preliminary roadless areas. Satellite images, most of them from 1999 to 2002, were used to identify disturbances and draw boundaries: approximately 820 Landsat 7 ETM+ scenes, 80 Landsat 5 TM scenes, 9,900 Landsat 7 ETM+ quicklooks, 1,783 Terra Aster, 516 Resurs-01 MSU-E, and 771 Resurs-01 MSU-SK. Digital roads data were used to establish preliminary roadless areas. Field checks have been performed for Russia, Finland and Sweden. Data sources used in the actual map - selected cities and towns, rivers, and lakes from ESRI ArcAtlas: Our Earth, 1996; country boundaries from VMAP Level 0, 1997; Alaska fires dataset created by Alaska Fire Service, published by Bureau of Land Management, 1950 - 1999; forest cover outside the boreal from Continuous Fields Tree Cover, University of Maryland, Department of Geography, Global Land Cover Facility, 2000. Non-intact boreal forest cover: Russia - Forests of USSR, GUGK, digitized by WHRC, 1955, 1990, Canada - Land Cover of Canada Version 1.1, Canadian Center for Remote Sensing, 1995, Alaska - AVHRR Land Cover, United States Geological Survey (USGS), 1991, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Japan, USA, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and others - Continuous Fields Tree Cover, University of Maryland. Intact forest land cover: Russia - Forests of USSR, GUGK, digitized by WHRC, 1955, 1990, Canada - Land Cover of Canada Version 1.1, Canadian Center for Remote Sensing, 1995, Alaska - AVHRR Land Cover, USGS, 1991. Collaborators
Find out more about Global Forest Watch's activities in Canada, Russia, and the United States. |
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