The Forest Monitoring Services provide innovative, timely, cost-effective and quality-assured forest information for reporting on:
- the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol
- international Biodiversity and Forest Protection policies (UNCBD, MCPFE, SEBI 2010)
- national and regional Environmental Monitoring programmes.
The core user community of GMES Forest Services comprises international authorities like the European Environment Agency (EEA), national ministries responsible for reporting on UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol and other international policies, as well as national to regional forest and environment agencies in charge of implementing national forest laws and programmes.
Standardised high-capacity processing chains with certified quality assurance procedures guarantee cost-efficient and high-quality products like forest maps and indices, carbon stock assessments and related statistics. Customised features, required accuracy levels, training measures and other service provider / user interactions are established via binding Service Level Agreements. Continuous customer care together with utility assessments and permanent input from the scientific community help to continuously improve service quality and ensure long-term service sustainability.
Users of the Forest Services benefit from continental to regional scale services and specialised tools to support reporting on national and international policies. Making use of earth observation methodologies allows retrieving spatially explicit information on the state of forests for large areas in a cost-efficient way and at proven high quality. It enables substituting or focusing field surveys to hot spot areas, and analysing changes and trends over time by using historic archive data. Long-term and regional service network experience guarantees reliable and sustainable service operation and planning security to the users.
