Terra-I: Capturing Forest Changes In Viet Nam Through An Almost Real Time Monitoring Solution

Viet Nam is one of the countries that have carried out systematic and regular forest inventories. Ground patrolling – a time-consuming and costly method – is mainly applied to detect forest coverage change including as a result of illegal logging and encroachment. Given large and difficult-to-access forest areas, ground patrolling requires enormous staffing and often is not rapidly organized, leading to delayed detection of illegal activities and hindering timely and efficient investigations.

Terra-i is a forest monitoring system that uses 10-meter spatial satellite imagery to detect vegetation-cover changes resulting from human activities in near realtime, producing updates every 16 days. By reducing the time between the occurrence of illegal incidents, such as illegal logging or encroachment and ranger responses, Terra-i provides early warnings on forest changes, helping to strengthen law enforcement and increase the transparency of forest monitoring.

The UN-REDD Viet Nam programme phase II, in collaboration with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), has supported the pilot application of the Terra-i system to monitor changes in forest land use, especially the forest conversion to coffee plantation in Di Linh district, Lam Dong province where forest encroachment is widespread and difficult to control. This was done in four steps: (i) introduction of Terra-i to stakeholders and identification of the needs and challenges to be addressed; (ii) deployment of the Terra-i pilot project; (iii) performance of a fieldwork-based calibration; and (iv) validation of Terra-i data with field data, and capacity building of local forest rangers.

Terra-i support not only provides spatial overview of forest cover changes but also provides alerts that are useful for local authorities to identify priority sites, and to plan and carry out timely and efficient actions.

As a result of the successful pilot application in Di Linh district, Lam Dong Provincial People Committee adopted Terra-i and decided to expand its application throughout the Province. Civil society organizations, such as Centre for Sustainable Rural Development (SRD) have also recognized Terra-i as a useful tool to promote participatory forest monitoring and suggesting the expansion of its application to other provinces in Viet Nam. Application of Terra-i system will help to enhance early detection of forest changes and enable conditions for effective participation of social in forest monitoring