Following conclusion and recommendations of the meeting were drafted by all participants. It was decided not to go deeply in technical matters and to stop the meeting on 23rd January, instead of the 24th.
A meeting with the same resource person was planned for October 2003, to state on the status, give the conclusions of the pilot study, and plan the next stage.
John Townshend presented the acknowledgment and stated that the information framework would fulfil GOFC-GOLD objectives. Peter Holmgren concluded mentioning the coming up COFO.
The information framework will provide the much needed commonly accepted framework to coordinate among and between providers of remotely sensed forest related information and generators of national ground based forest related information.
It will add value to the recent efforts that are aimed at promoting use of remote sensing data by providing it at much reduced prices and establishing cost-effective distribution systems.
The long term objective of the information framework is to contribute to progress towards sustainable land management including forests, through improved quality of information on environment, forest and land use for better policy formulation, implementation and follow-up at national and international levels.
The basic objective of the framework is development and implementation of an information framework suitable for global and regional analyses and validation of national data with the help of remotely sensed information collected on a systematic spatial sample grid of the earth's land surface. A coupled objective is to establish institutional arrangements to maintain and sustain such a framework and to regularly expand its content.
A complementary basic objective is to provide open and immediate access to the contents of this framework to analysts, academicians, scientists, researchers, governments, and civil society at large.
Finally, an objective is to ensure neutrality and longevity to the framework by locating the governance of the platform in the UN organizations like FAO and UNEP, which as part of their normative mandates within UN, will jointly govern the information framework process, including data storage and information system development.
Specifically, the information framework conceives to link global, regional and national networks to improve standardization, homogenization, compatibility and efficiency of information provided by them. The information framework desires to complement wall-to-wall approach and may serve as a tool for designing more specific (local and thematic) assessments.
The framework expects to provide information that improves design and efficiency of sampling for national forest assessment and helps in validation and reporting of national assessments of forests and related subjects climate change, land use and biodiversity. In doing so it may facilitate development of link between ex-situ and in-situ observations. It also plans to contribute to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) including provision of information two of MDGs indicators related extent of forest and biodiversity.
International institutions, national governments, science and research community, non-governmental organizations, and the civil society at large will be the main beneficiaries of the information framework. The international organizations will benefit in their global monitoring and reporting efforts related to forests, land use and the terrestrial environment.
The information flowing from the framework will help the national governments in policy development, monitoring and reporting relating to forests. The framework will provide a baseline when designing national monitoring and reporting systems and may thus fill an important function in national capacity building in countries especially where such datasets do not readily exist.
Better access and quality of information will lead to enhanced participation of and contribution from science and research community. The framework will facilitate decentralized and distributed data system that may help space agencies in efficient provision of data for policy-related analyses, and thereby increase the utility of the public investments in remote sensing. It will also raise the level of awareness in non-governmental organizations and the civil society leading to their improved and productive participation in the process.
The outputs of the information framework will span a very wide spectrum. It will help in more efficient sampling designs leading to better quality, precision, accuracy, standardisation, aggregation and harmonisation of national, regional and global information on forest assessments. Further it will establish better linkage of remote sensing information with in-situ ground information and will increase use and sharing of remote sensing data. It will enhance the general consensus about trends of change in forests, land cover and land use that will contribute to development of efficient indicators to monitor forestry and other land uses. The framework will also facilitate input as well as retrieval of data from the sample location over the Internet to provide open and immediate access of information to its users.
The information framework will build on past experience and networks of its partners to improve global monitoring on forests, land use and the environment. The framework will also create new partnerships to take advantage of technological development, reduce data costs and increase availability of remote sensing data. Specifically, the partnerships with space agencies and their affiliates are essential for data provision and data processing for the specified needs. Further, that more involvement of the science and research community will ensure continued evolution and improvement in the methods and technologies used under the umbrella of information framework.
The FAO and UNEP will coordinate with countries, define information needs and will host, store and provide the contents of the information framework freely. The input of the contents will be facilitated by GTOS, GOFC-GOLD and others.
The information framework will be directly applied to monitor the forests in the Global Forest Resources Assessment (GFRA). FAO will develop and support formulation of standard methodologies for use of the information framework and will undertake pilot studies in Central Africa and possibly in other places. FAO will coordinate and organize training of national experts to facilitate decentralization of the interpretation work. In addition to the above, the framework has great potential for use in the field of carbon cycle science, dryland assessments, and ecosystem assessments.
The framework will be based on a systematic spatial sample of the earth's surface located at each 1 degree by 1 degree latitude and longitude crossing over the entire land surface of the world, to which time series of data, e.g. satellite images, can be attached through a quality controlled, standardized and decentralized process.
The dimension of the sample site will be defined to allow monitoring changes in a spatial context and in a scale relevant to land management. Initially, each area sample will cover 10 x 10 km2 area. The total number of such sample sites may be about 13 000 in number and cover about 1 % of the land area.
Initially, the information framework will contain for each sample site two or three-dates-time series of high-resolution satellite data (1992, 2000, Landsat data sets to start with).
Orthorectified satellite images covering 10 x 10 km2 will be chipped out from the satellite imageries at each latitude and longitude crossing initially at 10 and 5 year interval for use of the information framework.
The information framework may hold other data sets such as medium or low-resolution satellite data that will help in the analysis, for instance phenological information and digital elevation/terrain models.
An internet based system will facilitate data distribution as well as the input of standardized interpreted results.
The information framework will develop and implement quality assurance and quality control procedures to provide high level of credibility.
The members decided to immediately initiate actions to implement the conclusion and recommendations of this meeting and adopted the following time based action plan for the year 2003 (see Table 1)
Table 1 - Information Framework Action Plan for 2003
Tasks |
Who |
Target date |
Meeting minutes to participants |
FAO |
Jan. 2003 |
More detailed project document with work plan |
FAO-UNEP |
Feb. 2003 |
Ask for inputs from potential partners/data providers on project |
GOFC-GOLD JRC NASA CEOS members IUFRO GTOS panel members ISRO Donors |
Feb. 2003 |
"Endorsement" by COFO, CPF, GTOS (GOFC-GOLD) |
March ? | |
Letter from FAO (ADG) to each PI to invite them to participate and find ways to contribute |
FAO |
Jan. |
Develop procedures for extraction of large numbers of samples, including resourcing and work plan. |
ESIPS, i.e. GLCF (PI John Townshend) and TRFIC (PI David Skole) |
April |
Pilot work in Central Africa, goal to demonstrate potential |
FAO/UNEP |
Feb-Oct. |
Information system/interface development |
FAO |
July |
Agreements with partners for data provision ? action Target: end-2003: world*2, archived data (1992/2000) |
||
Formulation of future data needs |
Sept. | |
Request also to JRC for contributions/technical support |
FAO |
Feb. |
Plans for application related to GFRA, including training and decentralized inputs |
FAO |
Sept. |
Review progress/lessons learned, plan for implementation phase, Rome |
Oct. |
