September 2020 – The MapBiomas Indonesia team engaged experts in the field of Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing to review the platform, methodology and data for the first collection of land cover and land use maps covering the twenty-year period 2000 to 2019. The aim of this review was to receive criticism, input, and guidance prior to public release. Given the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, the presentations and discussions took place over video conference.
The experts engaged included Arief Wijaya, PhD (Climate, Forest and Oceans Senior Manager from the World Resources Institute, Jarot Mulyo Semedi, M.Sc. (Lecturer staff at the University of Indonesia), Arief Darmawan, PhD (Lecturer at the Faculty of Agriculture, Lampung University), Robert Heilmayr, PhD (Assistant Professor at the Bren School, University of California of Santa Barbara), and David Gaveau, PhD (The Tree Map and Center for International Forestry Research). These technical experts are experienced in remote sensing to detect land cover and land use dynamics for Indonesia.
Inputs provided by these experts included platform functionality, indication of Landsat image quality used in the mosaicking process, land cover class sampling methods, and post-integration filter rules. These inputs will now be used to improve the platform. In addition, the potential for collaboration with these and other technical experts to validate the land cover data is a promising opportunity for the future.
