"We think there is a lot of potential for remote sensing in this area," said Pierre Vincent of VIASAT Go-Technolgie. "We will focus a lot on the vegetation aspect: typically such operations remove part of the natural cover, so the local environment has to be restored during or after industrial activities to its previous state. Such activities take place across quite large areas, so with satellites we will better be able to monitor them as they take place.
"We would like to go further if possible, and combine remote sensing with other data sources to estimate the carbon captured through reforestation and related activities. There are not a lot of tools developed to measure that kind of stuff as yet, but it represents a new market in the future there will be that need."
Towards sustainable management of forests
Effective resource management is an increasingly business-critical issue for forestry, with global concern rising over deforestation and the impacts of unsustainable forest harvesting.
The range of stakeholders with an interest in how forests are managed is large: there are those that live in local communities as well as users of timber and forest-related services including tourism, recreation, and biomass burning. On a wider scale we are all stakeholders in forests, due to their role in moderating the human-caused increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Aon, a major UK based re-insurance company, is the prime contractor working with companies exploiting forest products including leading UK home improvement chain B&Q, South African forest product firm Global Forest Products and household cleaning manufacturer Reck
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Contact: Mariangela D'Acunto
mariangela.dacunto@esa.int
39-069-418-0856
European Space Agency
7-Feb-2006