INPE Teach Foreign Technicians to Monitor Forests

Hello reader!

It follows one communicates published in english on the day (26/05) in the website of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) noting that technicians from Angola, Mozambique and Paraguay are learning how to monitor forests at INPE.

Duda Falcão

Technicians from Angola, Mozambique

and Paraguay Learn How to Monitor

Forests Using Satellite at INPE

May, 26, 2011

Climate Change has accelerated the global need to monitor forests and study its evolution, something that Brazil, through the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), holds more than twenty years. Technicians from Angola, Mozambique and Paraguay will learn how to monitor forests using satellite images during the course of the Amazon Regional Center at INPE, in Belém (PA), from May 30th to June 17th.

“The Technology used to monitor the Amazon is shared with experts from other countries also interested in look after their forests and allows them to reproduce the techniques in their countries”, says Alessandra Gomes, INPE’s researcher who works in Amazon project, in Belém, place chosen by Institute to consolidate its international center for technology dissemination in satellite monitoring of rainforests.

INPE satellite monitors nearly 4 million square kilometers of forest in the Amazon every year. The largest forests tracking program in the world allow the country to measure deforestation and transparently disclose all information obtained from satellites.

This is the second course – the first in Portuguese – among the nine in the agreement for cooperation between INPE, Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), Brazilian Environment and Natural Resources Institute (IBAMA) and International Cooperation Agency of Japan (JICA). In October 2010 was held the first course in Spanish for technicians from Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. In the coming years will be held training sessions in English and French too.

The international training in forest monitoring offers free satellite data and transfers the technologies for image processing and large databases manipulation in TerraAmazon system, developed by de Institute. With these tools, the countries that have tropical rainforests can implement systems, similar to the INPE, to monitor the coverage and use of land.

Source: WebSite of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE)