INPE and CAF lauch video lessons on forest satellite monitoring

The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and CAF -development bank of Latin America- launched a series of video lessons from the Capacitree Project - Training and Forest Satellite Monitoring today. This action is complementary to the activities of INPE's Amazon Regional Center, which in two years has already prepared classroom courses for over 250 people from Latin America, Asia and Africa on Brazilian practices of satellite monitoring in the Brazilian Legal Amazon.

All 24 classes will be available at the website www.inpe.br/cra in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French to any person interested in taking the course. The first four videos show basic notions of remote sensing, geoprocessing and digital image processing, as well as information about INPE's Amazon Program, which uses TerraAmazon systems in its monitoring activities, such as PRODES, that calculates the Amazon's annual rate of deforestation, and DETER, which serves as a control alert.

The content specifically related to the classes in the TerraAmazon system, divided into 20 videos, can be also accessed via Youtube, through channel INPE-CRA.

"With these video lessons we open an important phase of our training program, which can now be accessed by people who cannot come to Brazil for classroom courses," explains Alessandra Gomes, head of INPE's Amazon Regional Center. The Brazilian institute is frequently sought to assess technology and methods in environmental monitoring by satellites, which are considered the most advanced in the world. INPE performs activities based on forests satellite data since the 1970s, when it launched its first earth observation satellite (Landsat, of United States).

One of the legacies of this experience is the project PRODES, which has completed 27 years of uninterrupted provision of accurate data on deforestation in the planet largest rainforest. Over the years, Amazon's monitoring has benefited from new technologies and satellites and, in 2004, INPE has developed a system called DETER, whose daily collected data are sent to the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) and states environmental agencies, which can intensify control in the field.

Using the data provided by PRODES and DETER, the Brazilian government has formulated policies and deforestation command and control efforts which have had positive effects in reducing the Brazilian Amazon rate of deforestation from more than 27.000 square kilometers in 2004 to about 5.000 square kilometers in 2014.

With Capacitree Project, INPE also hopes to become a worldwide reference in forest monitoring by satellites training. Therefore, all countries interested in protecting their forests may have their own monitoring system. In order to create the video lessons, INPE counted with resources provided by CAF and support of FUNCATE (Foundation for Science, Technology and Space Applications).

Ligia Castro, CAF's Director of Environment and Climate Change, considers that this type of initiative supports the institution's policy to disseminate knowledge among countries, strengthens national, regional and local environment institutions, and also complements the joint work that CAF has been conducting together with Brazil and Italy regarding conservation and sustainable use of forests through the Amazon Without Fire Project in Bolivia and Ecuador, which will be expanded next year also to Peru. CAF's representative in Brazil, Victor Rico, ponders that the initiative is part of a set of technical cooperation actions that CAF has in Brazil to promote sustainable development in line with the Brazilian government priorities.