Identifying Critical Earth Observations for Forest Monitoring: A Role for GEO

摘要

Forest ecosystems are amongst the Earth's greatest natural resources. The current lack of globally consistent map products for forests, however, is significantly limiting efforts to understand trends in the world's forests. To help fill this gap and advance our knowledge of the status of and trends in the world's forest resources, the Forest Monitoring Community of Practice within the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) is completing several tasks related to forest observations in the 10-year plan towards a Global Earth Observing Systems of Systems (GEOSS). The Community of Practice is also engaged in the GEO user interface process to identify critical Earth observation priorities common to many GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas. The paper reports on the results of the process to date.