Newsletter 3

May 2020

Online training for field team leaders

The precautions taken in Kyrgyzstan to combat coronavirus are highly important for the safety and health of the population. The earlier they are applied, the better for the nation. With the quarantine regime due to the coronavirus pandemic travelling of the international experts was not possible as well the field activities in the country has been affected. To compensate it was decided to move parts of the activities of the second National forest inventory to online mode. This is necessary for timely implementation of all field tasks. From 30.04.2020 to 09.04.2020 an 7-day an online training for the future trainer and supervisor & control teams was launched. The main goal of the online course was to train trainers and experts who will train 12 field teams to conduct field works in the forests of Kyrgyzstan.

International experts conducted the training on a special e-learning platform allowing webinars, video conferences and provide access to documents and learning-videos. The program includes lectures and exercises aimed at obtaining skills and information on the design and organization of inventory, field work control to ensure quality and correct data sampling. Participants learned how to prepare, select and survey sample areas, as well as how to work with measurement tools for assessment and data collection software. Special attention is paid to the Field Manual, which will be used by field teams daily. Moreover, a step-by-step guidance is given to establish efficient daily work procedures for the inventory fieldwork, as well as answers to technical problems and emergency situations

The Training of Field Teams can now directly follow and start at 27.05.

With no break the newly trained 12 Field Teams start beginning of June in all types of forests in the Republic. In total, ca. 1,300 tracts will be measured using modern equipment, remote sensing technologies and mobile field software. With the help of field equipment, specialists will be able to determine the age, height and quality of trees, wood stock, conservation of biomass and carbon in forests, the degree of forest degradation and renewable capacity. Using tablets with a data collection program will help you save time and automate the survey process as much as possible. This will allow you to get the most necessary information about the state of forests, their reserves and resources, and estimate the area of forests with an accuracy of more than 95%.

National land cover classification for the second forest inventory of Kyrgyzstan

The second forest inventory consultant team has started the process of transmitting geo-data for land cover classification, which was obtained from the Sentinel-2A And Sentinel-2B satellites received by the European space Agency (ESA). Images are free of charge, have a spatial resolution of 10 m and are provided as squares with an area of 100×100 km. In total, about 500 GB of data was processed and transmitted to GUKLOU – about 40 mosaic images that completely cover the territory of the Republic.

To reflect the differences in vegetation at different altitudes, considering the seasons, several images were uploaded and pre-processed for one year of the same territory.
At the moment the team has completed the preliminary image processing in cooperation with the research Institute of Joanneum from Austria. The pre-processing stage is the initial stage of land cover classification, which prepares data in the format required for further analysis.

Parameters of the transmitted data include:

Processed individual satellite images of at least two dates per year for the entire country
Cloudless mosaic of the entire country in the form of a single raster file

* Vegetation indexes needed to improve classification results.

The development of the software for data collection and processing

After field testing, the program has been updated and improved. The translation into Russian has been completed and corrected. Implemented a module for navigation, downloading and checking data without Internet access. The program minimizes all errors when entering data and does not allow you to proceed to the next step until they are corrected. A strict system of input verification and data quality control is achieved by minimizing the input of free text through methods such as drop-down lists for text values with specifications, and upper and lower limits for digits. The program will also generate errors if the parameters of the surveyed area are entered incorrectly. After all errors are corrected and all cells are filled in, the program allows you to upload data to the server in the database and get verification. Field teams have the ability to directly export data to the server directly in the field, which will guarantee constant monitoring of the progress of the supervision and control team.

Launch of the NIL website and Wiki-based project management portal

Currently, a website for the second forest inventory of Kyrgyzstan has been developed, which is a platform with information about the project and results presented using the Saiku program for data analysis and building analytical panels. On the website you can find project news and events, links to access the GIS portal, inventory data, and Wiki project management. Access will be partial and full. Full access to the entire database and the results of the second forest inventory will only have experts of the technical group, the specialists of SAEPF GALLO and project staff. It is planned that part of the reports and tables with data will be published on the website itself with open access for the General public. The website is a component of the integrated forest management information system (IMIS), which allows you to manage forest resources and monitor actions that affect the conservation and development of forests over time. ISUL will provide a framework for continuous and continuous monitoring of the state of forest resources, including data on carbon capture. Within the framework of the ISUL, different groups of users have different access rights depending on the modules and databases.

Newsletter 3

Online training for field team leaders

National land cover classification for the second forest inventory of Kyrgyzstan

The development of the software for data collection and processing

Launch of the NIL website and Wiki-based project management portal

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