Land Cover Land Use Change Ecosystems Enabling Local
Land Cover Land Use Change & Ecosystems Enabling Local Monitoring of Landscape Change across Eastern and Southern Africa Problem specification Land Cover in East Africa is changing rapidly as population growth and immigration change where humans live and work. Earlier SERVIR projects created single-date land cover maps for the region, but they did not explicitly address land cover change, and were created using methods that cannot be repeated. Additionally, while maps are useful in many contexts, they are generally not a statistically defensible basis for reporting land cover change at the national scale. Goal: Full technical transfer to RCMRD: • Methods for using the Landsat record through a tool called Time. Sync to make statistical estimates of historical land cover change in seven East African countries • Capacity to create annually updateable maps of land cover across the region using Google Earth Engine Key stakeholders Decision makers: National REDD+ coordinators, who need annual land cover activity data Users: RCMRD and regional partners Beneficiaries: Governmental and non-governmental monitoring efforts in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Ethiopia Special audiences: Other Hubs may benefit from integration of Time. Sync and Collect Earth Online (see center panel) Science Collaborations, Earth Observations, Models, and Methods Highlight: Integration of Time. Sync and Collect Earth Online Theory of Change To Achieve Sustainability This project is integrating our Time. Sync tool, which provides easy access to the Landsat archive, with the popular Collect Earth Online, which accesses high resolution image services. This integration is being undertaken with SIG using SERVIR support. The result will be a globally scalable observation tool that marries high temporal resolution with high spatial resolution. Check out a hands-on demonstration on Thursday here at SAGE!! Contributions from AST Immediate Next Steps Create annual land cover maps for seven East African countries The AST, in partnership with RCMRD, Silva. Carbon, and Google, has developed and fully transferred the Time. Sync tool to RCMRD. Partners are now working on a sustainable method for creating annually updated 30 m maps of land cover throughout the region. Beginning ARL: _2_ Current ARL: _6_ Final ARL: _7_ Earth Observations / Models / Methods The Landsat archive provides the basis both for making sample-based estimates of land cover change with Time. Sync and for making annual land cover maps for each country. Google Earth Engine offers access to the entire archive through a programming interface, and it also provides parallel computing. Being able to work with the imagery on Google‘s servicer eliminates the needs to both download imagery and buy extensive local computing resources. Team photo from a Silva. Carbon-organized training on statistical estimation and Google Earth Engine at RCMRD, 19 -22 March, 2018 Looking forward Visits to each of these countries to engage ministries and NGOs in finalizing land change statistics, and delivery of annual maps of land cover change
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