Forests are essential to maintaining biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and supporting livelihoods. However, they are under significant threat from deforestation, land degradation, and unsustainable management practices. Monitoring the health of forests, detecting illegal logging, and assessing land degradation are key challenges in sustainable forest management. Ground-based data collection methods are often insufficient in providing the large-scale, real-time information required for effective forest management and reporting on SDG targets, particularly SDG 15: Life on Land.
Earth Observation (EO) technologies offer unparalleled opportunities for sustainable forest management. ESA’s SDG-Forest projects (15.1.1 & 15.1.2) enable the monitoring of forests from space, providing accurate, high-resolution data on forest cover, deforestation rates. EO provides critical insights into how forests are changing over time, supports early detection of illegal activities, and helps assess whether forests are being managed sustainably. These projects utilize satellite data and AI-powered analytics to monitor progress against SDG indicators, particularly SDG 15.1 (conservation of forests).
Figure: PlanetScope image of Pan Pan forest on April 28, 2020
