Supporting Forest Inventories in Mexico with Satellite Data
The ESA GDA Forest Management activity is helping Mexico integrate satellite Earth Observation data into national forest monitoring, providing high-resolution land cover and tree cover information to support sustainable management, climate reporting, and evidence-based policy.
Description
Mexico’s diverse forest ecosystems are vital for biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, and rural livelihoods. However, the country faces challenges in collecting reliable and consistent data on forest conditions and changes over time.
To address these challenges, the ESA GDA Forest Management consortium is collaborating with the World Bank and Mexico’s National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) through the Mexico Strengthening Entrepreneurship in Productive Forest Landscapes Project. The initiative integrates Earth Observation (EO) into forest monitoring processes, providing more accurate, consistent, and up-to-date information on forest resources. This improved data supports stronger planning, policy-making, and reporting, including meeting Mexico’s commitments under climate finance mechanisms.
The first set of EO products developed includes land cover maps generated from Sentinel-2 imagery combined with national datasets, as well as tree cover density (TCD) maps.
The activity focuses on helping national teams interpret, validate, and apply EO data within their workflows, with an emphasis on transparent methods that enable experts to replicate analyses and adjust them as needs evolve.
You can read more about this Case Study here: Satellite Data Supports Forest Inventories in Mexico