ReCover Project Home

Fighting deforestation

The ReCover project aims to develop service capabilities beyond state-of-the-art, in order to support the fight against deforestation and forest degradation in the tropical region, in the context of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). REDD will be a major driver in the development of more effective and reliable procedures for monitoring tropical forests.

Impact through collaboration with local users

The high impact value of ReCover is achieved by working directly for and with users and local research partners.

–  Service contents are adapted to user
      requirements and are specified in the Service Level
      Agreement between the user and service provider.

–  User workshops and training support capacity
      building.

–  Project results are disseminated in collaboration
      with users.

The long-term service sustainability is also concerned, including evaluation of the potential of new missions such as the ESA Sentinels.

Focus areas of ReCover research

The ReCover project contributes to the reduction of errors in estimations of the terrestrial carbon balance, arising from uncertain rates of tropical deforestation. This is achieved by developing and implementing satellite image based methods for the monitoring of tropical forests. ReCover research  contributes to the MRV (Measurement, Reporting, Verification) process of REDD+, by developing novel methods for:

–  The collection of activity data, i.e. the
      IPCC-compliant six land use classes: forest land,
      cropland, grassland, wetlands, settlements, other
      land – Tier 2.

–  The estimation of carbon stock per unit area, also
      using satellite data to support Tier 3 approaches.

Products resulting from ReCover can also be used to promote sustainable forest management.

Funding

The ReCover project is funded under the Framework 7 Theme Space program of the European Commission. The three-year project was launched in November 2010.