From 8 to 11 April the capital of Mozambique, Maputo, is hosting the 2019 plenary assembly of The Global Forest Observations Initiative, GFOI, organized by the Government of the Republic of Mozambique through the Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development (MITADER).

Since the Paris Climate Change agreement the signatory countries have needed more information on the state of woodland and greenhouse gas emission accounting.

GFOI is an informal partnership that coordinates international support to developing countries on forest monitoring and greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for the purposes of REDD+ and related forums.

This workshop has included a networking area for participant entities to exhibit their products. In this exhibition area GMV is showcasing the European Union HORIZON 2020 funded project MySustainableForest (GA No. 776045).

MySustainableForest has developed an interoperable geospatial web platform providing 6 satellite-based services with 28 forestry-monitoring and -management products. Products are co-designed with stakeholder’s needs and expectations in view, integrating in-situ data, LIDAR, airborne data, sonic, high and very high resolution optical and radar satellites -Rapideye, SPOT, Setinel 1 & 2, WorldView, Pleiades.

At present, products are in validation phase in 14 testing sites across the Atlantic, Mediterranean, continental forest types and Eucalyptus globulus plantations.

MySustainableForest meets the following priority research topics, set for GFOI Plenary 2019:

• The Use of data from new satellite missions including biomass mapping from space taking advantage of 6-7 upcoming missions.
• Integration of Sentinel and Landsat data for example (integration of optical and radar data), in contexts including early warning.
• Early warning: responding to user needs, demonstration and upscaling in near-real time forest monitoring.
• Use of high resolution data for targeted sampling in stratified area change estimation (for long-term monitoring)
• Exploring the idea of super-sites for key research activities, which can demonstrate operational use of new methods and technologies.

Results show the suitability of MySustainableForest Products for REDD+ MRV protocols.

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