Capacitree Program: Saving the Amazon via satellite

Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) and CAF Development bank of Latin America today launched a set of video courses under the Capacitree Project — Satellite Forest Training and Monitoring. This is part the activities of INPE’s Regional Amazon Center (Centro Regional da Amazonia), which in two years has prepared face-to-face courses on Brazil’s satellite control practices of the Amazon for more than 250 people from Latin America, Asia and Africa.

The 24 courses will be available in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French for anyone interested who signs up at www.inpe.br/cra. The first four videos will contain basic notions of remote detection, geoprocessing and digital image processing, as well as information about the INPE Amazon Program, which uses the TerraAmazon system in its monitoring activities, e.g. PRODES, which estimates the Amazon’s annual deforestation rate, and DETER, which is an auditing alert.

Content specifically related to courses about the TerraAmazon System are available on 20 videos posted on the INPE-CRA YouTube channel.

“With these video courses we are opening up an important area of our training program, which can be accessed by people living outside Brazil and who cannot participate in face-to-face courses,” explained Alessandra Gomes, Head of the Regional Amazon Center at INPE. The Brazilian institute is frequently consulted to review the satellite environmental control technology and methods, which are considered the most advanced in the world. Since 1970, when the first Earth observation satellite (Landsat, USA) was launched, INPE has been carrying out activities based on orbital data on forestation.

One of the legacies of this experience is the PRODES program, which is about to complete 27 years providing uninterrupted and accurate data on the deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest. Over the years, monitoring of the Amazon has used new technologies and satellites, and in 2004 INPE developed DETER, whose daily data are forwarded to Ibama and other government environmental agencies that can conduct on-site audits.

The Brazilian government has used data provided by PRODES and DETER as a source to devise deforestation policies and control actions. These had positive effects on reducing the deforestation rate of the Brazilian Amazon, from more than 27,000 square km in 2004 to approximately 5,000 square km in 2014.

With the Capacitree Project, INPE hopes to become a global benchmark in satellite forest training and monitoring. In this way all countries interested in protecting their forests will be able to develop their own monitoring systems. To develop the video courses, INPE received funds from CAF and support from FUNCATE (Foundation for Science, Space Applications and Technologies).

Ligia Castro, head of CAF Environment and Climate Change Directorate, believes that this type of initiative reaffirms the institution’s policy of disseminating knowledge among countries, reinforcing national, regional and environmental institutions, and complements CAF’s joint work with Brazil and Italy on the conservation and sustainable use of forests through the Amazon Project. CAF representative in Brazil, Victor Rico, explained that the initiative is part of a set of technical cooperation actions carried forward by the development bank of Latin America in Brazil with a view to promoting sustainable development in line with the priorities of the Brazilian government.