Objective
The INFORMS project, An Integrated Forest Monitoring
System for Central Africa, was designed to monitor land-cover and
land-use changes in the tropical rain forests of Central Africa through
the mapping of forest types, extent, spatial distribution, and biomass
using an integrated approach of remote sensing and field observations.
The Congo Basin in Central Africa contains approximately 90% of Africa's remaining productive forests. The high diversity of both floral and faunal life and the abundance of natural resources underscore the inherent ecological, cultural, and economic importance of this region. However, an accelerating pace of land-use change and degradation threatens to overrun the dynamic equilibrium tha thas been cultivated over countless generations between human activities and the ecological integrity of the Congo Basin. The INFORMS project aims to ducment and track the reate and extent of changes to and degradation of the region's tropical rain forests in order to aid in the development of improved forest management strategies for Central Africa.
Project Goals
An integral part of the INFORMS project is the promotion of an interdisciplinary approach to forest monitoring that involves not only research scientists and ecologists but foresters, geographers, policy makers, and stakeholders working at both the local and regional scales. By adopting an interdisciplinary and multi-scale approach to forest mapping, we are able to gain a more complete picture of the causes and effects of forest change in the Congo Basin. Specific goals of the INFORMS project include
- Developing methods to map Central Africa forest dynamics using a multi-sensor, multi-scale approach;
- Focusing on high biodiversity sites;
- Mapping the extent of logging and other land use chage;
- Developing validation protocols for regional land cover prodcuts; and
- Ensuring that forest research findings reach the relevant policy makers.
Project Approach
The process of mapping changes in land cover and land use in the tropical rain forests of Central Africa is complicated by the diversity of land uses and the lack of continuous, cloud-free coverage by any single remote sensing instrement. In order to improved vegetation mapping and forest monitoring techniques for the regin, we have focused on developing an analysis based integrating ex-situ multi-sensor remote sensing observations
with in-situ field data.
Study Sites
The work of the INFORMS project in Central Africa focuses primarily in and around protected areas including national parks, national forests, and wildlife reserves. Many of the sites investigated here have also been designated as landscapes of interest under the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), an international effort comprised of over thirty national governments and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations.
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Current and previous INFORMS study sites include:
- The Sangha Tri-National Park in northern Republic of Congo;
- The Ituri Forest Reserve and Salonga National Park, both in the Democratic Republic of Congo;
- Lopé National Park in Gabon;
- The rainforest of southern Cameroon; and
- The Albertine Rift region in Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo. This area is also the focus of WHRC’s Protected Areas Watch for the Albertine Rift (PAWAR) project. More information about this project and the region can be found at the “Eastern and Southern Africa” portion of this website.
Please use the links above or the navigation pane at left to access more information on each study site included in the INFORMS project.
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