The Sustainable Forest Management and Information System (SFMIS) is a tool that utilizes spaceborne optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to map current and historic forest cover. It is free and open-source and contains several methodologies for landcover classification, allowing the user to select the method that yields the results with the highest accuracy for their specific region of interest.
This tool was specifically developed to inform on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15.2.1 – tracking forest change – and report on forest/nonforest cover on an annual basis within a given area (e.g. country level, protected areas, etc). It performs a comparison of forest cover between a given year and a baseline year to determine the rate of change. In addition, the tool can also be used to inform on important decisions about where reforestation efforts as well as deforestation prevention efforts need to be focused.
The SFMIS tool was developed for Panama, however, it can be adapted to other regions of the world.
SFMIS Tutorial
This project was a collaboration between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland Baltimore Campus. It was funded through a NASA ROSES grant under NASA’s Biodiversity and Ecological Forecasting Program.