FOCUS AREA 1: Knowledge of forest status and dynamics

Focus Area 1 is dedicated to enhancing the understanding and management of West Africa's forests by ensuring that high quality data is available for decision-making at national and subregional levels.

This focus area works with:

Forest data assessment and generation:

Assessment of existing forest data in ECOWAS countries, and identification of information gaps on forest condition, land use and land cover dynamics, and capacity development needs.
Generation of new forest data on above-ground biomass at subregional scales, through an innovative methodology that combines field data, airborne laser scaner (LiDAR) data, and space-based GEDI data.
Capacity development on remote sensing and forest inventories for national forest monitoring (NFM): on-line, Conakry, Freetown, and Kumasi (Ghana).

West Africa Forest Resources Knowledge Portal:

In collaboration with Aghrymet, develop bilingual portal for enhanced forestry data access and sharing to facilitate transboundary cooperation.
Showcase case studies, sustainable forest management practices, and tools for wildlife/biodiversity monitoring.
Tailored for technicians, researchers and stakeholders to bolster decision-making and forest dynamics comprehension.
Facilitate reporting to international frameworks particularly for the countries, ensure sustainability in forest data management and analysis.

Understanding Deforestation Drivers:

Land use land cover (LULC) change assessment.
Assessment of direct drivers of forest change in West Africa, using SEPAL and Collect Earth online.
Assessment of indirect socio-economic drivers of forest change in transboundary hotspots.
Enhancing community engagement in forest monitoring.

Discover more details for the process of recognizing the direct drivers of deforestation and forest degradation within the ECOWAS region by exploring the methodologies employed, data sources and tools utilized, and findings uncovered by visiting our detailed technical page.

Aligned with the Forest Convergence Plan, this component builds upon previous initiatives like the UN-REDD Programme and leverages networks like West African Network for Forest Biomass Assesment (WANFOBA) and West African Network of Experts on Mapping and Land Use and Land Cover (WANEM-LULC).