Ecosystem Services Monitoring

SarVision is currently working with the Institute for Environmental Security (IES), UNEP / GRID Arendal, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS), Fundacion Gaia / COAMA, and the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP) to contribute to three environmental security assessments, focussing on threats to ecosystem services (forest products, water provision, biodiversity conservation, carbon storage and sequestration, etc) and human security.

Efforts focus on the indigenous territories in the Mataven area in the Colombian Guiana Shield Region, the gorilla habitat of the peace parks in the Great Lakes region of Africa and the peat swamps of Kalimantan, Indonesia.

In Colombia, (indigenous) communities are driven off their lands by guerrilla and paramilitary warfare and the cultivation or the eradication of illegal crops such as coca. The case study presents one of the first applications of the high resolution radar monitoring system prototype in the mid-ninetees.

During years of rising coca prices, an increase in areas cleared for coca cultivation can readily be observed on radar imagery, such as the ERS radar example to the right shows. In this example, forests are shown in grey, whereas pastures, roads, and some houses are shown in shades of green. Coca fields are typically recognizable as square fields that are cleared in mature forest at some relatively short distance from roads and existing fields, in an attempt to conceal them on the ground. In the image on the right, coca is indicated in light green in the South-East corner.