Monitoring of Vegetation Cover in Southern Bahia (Bahia)

The remote mapping of vegetation cover of 1.25 million hectares in Southern Bahia began in 2011 with the satellite imagery classification of 1990, 1996, 2001 and 2007 images depicting the area of influence of Veracel Celulose. In 2014, a new stage of monitoring was engaged using images from 2013. The project, funded by Veracel Celulose, was the result of formal agreements within the framework of Bahia’s Forest Forum.

Its main activities include:

• Recruitment and training of satellite image interpreters;
• Coordination of technical teams;
• Visual classification of high-resolution images;
• On-site verification of the interpretation results;
• Calculation of estimated shifts in vegetation cover and land use over time;
• Presentation of results on IBIO’s WebGIS platform (www.igeo.org.br) and training of local agents for decision-making based on mapping.