Institutions:

• National Institute for Space Research (INPE)
• Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA)
• Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)
• Brazilian Agency for Cooperation (ABC)

International Course on Tropical Forest Monitoring
The largest extensions of tropical forests are found in Latin America, in western equatorial Africa and Southeast Asia, in which the largest continuous area of tropical forest are located in the Amazon River Basin. Most nations in these regions are part of so-called developing countries, which makes them more dependent on forests resources, causing deforestation.

The difficulty now is to obtain accurate estimates of the forest loss rate accruing in each of these countries. To fight the spread of deforestation, the use of remote sensing techniques has been an efficient way to quantify the loss of forest. Among the nations situated in the tropical region, only Brazil has a program to monitor its forests, developed and operated by the National Institute for Space Research since 1988.

Thus, a training program will contribute to the implementation of satellite monitoring systems in the concerned countries. INPE is an institute capacitated for training of skilled personnel in the handling of remote imagery and transfer of technology, mainly due to the more than 20 years of experience in Satellite Forest Monitoring Systems.

IBAMA uses deforestation detection systems in the Amazon for nearly 30 years and over the past 10 years has intensified the corporate training program on Geoprocessing techniques increasing the capacity of Environmental Analysts to use data from satellite monitoring systems in the surveillance activities.

Therefore, the executing agencies of this project, INPE and IBAMA, have extensive experience in tropical forest monitoring, and work together to fight the spread of deforestation. This partnership is effective in training of skilled personnel and should support new forest monitoring systems developed by the target countries.

Course Locations: Belém (Pará) and Brasilia (Federal District)

• Portuguese-speaking Countries: 30/05/2011 a 17/06/2011
• English-speaking Countries: 18/10/2011 a 04/11/2011
• French-Speaking Countries: 23/01/2012 a 10/02/2012

These courses are intended for countries with agreements made between the Organization (JICA / ABC) and its institutions.

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TCTP Online

Content

Content The course will be taught by experienced professionals through lectures, use of personal computers, audiovisual resources, individual and group task, discussions and technical visits. The course will last for three weeks with a workload of 120 hours and the following content:

• The Amazon Program: INPE’s Monitoring Programs of the Brazilian Amazon
• Introduction to Remote Sensing
• Introduction to Digital Image Processing
• Introduction to Cartography and Geoprocessing
• TerraAmazon: system and installation, database creation and connection, conceptual model, projects, rules, topology, views, themes
• Remote Sensing Center - IBAMA
• Visit to SIPAM (Amazon Protection System) and DPF (Federal Police Department)
• Amazon Monitoring with Alos/PalsarR: INDICAR Project
• SISCOM – Shared System of Environmental Information (Spatial Database)
• Discussions
• Field Visits