As part of the drive to establish a deforestation monitoring system or platform in Indonesia, the MapBiomas Indonesia team participated in a deforestation validation workshop in São Paulo, Brazil, on 15–19 April 2024. The workshop, which was held in the Hotel Transamérica Faria Lima, took place especially for MapBiomas network members Arapyaú, ArcPlan, Ecostage and LAPIG – all of which are based in Brazil, and Auriga Nusantara from Indonesia.
More specifically, the workshop was designed to introduce MapBiomas Alerta – a deforestation monitoring platform developed and applied in Brazil – to MapBiomas Indonesia, which was being represented by the Auriga Nusantara technical team. Workshop materials were designed and delivered by MapBiomas Alerta developers Marcos Rosa, Lana Teixeira, Carolina Del Lama Marques, and Sergio Oliveira.
On the first day, Dr Marcos Rosa, General Technical Coordinator of MapBiomas Alerta, outlined the platform’s methodologies, including compilation, validation, perfecting deforestation alerts with high-resolution satellite imagery (Planet Scope with 3.7-meter spatial resolution), auditing, matching with relevant data, and report making to publication through a publicly available platform.
The subsequent session involved technical training on operating SCCON, a platform used for selecting daily Planet Scope images to validate deforestation alerts; and Workspace, a platform used for finalizing the spatial boundaries of deforested areas and auditing them to ensure the quality and consistency of the data. The session was facilitated by Lana Teixeira (Technical Coordinator for MapBiomas Alerta Validations).
Next, Carolina Del Lama Marques moderated a session on cases where MapBiomas Alerta has been used. Carol, as she is usually known, conveyed various examples of MapBiomas Alerta use in Brazil by government, prosecutors, financial institutions, the media, and civil society. Examples included Brazil’s forestry authorities using data from MapBiomas Alerta to take action against deforesters, and financial service providers like banks using it to screen credit applications or even sanction borrowers shown to be deforesting.
The final day’s activities included reflecting on and discussing the implementation of MapBiomas Alerta in Indonesia. The session was extremely relevant to the MapBiomas Indonesia team as the network plans to establish MapBiomas Alerta Indonesia.
