Global Forest Watch: A Look at Land Use in Liberia

Global Forest Watch is a dynamic and versatile tool created by the World Resources Institute (WRI)  for monitoring forests and the many land uses that impact them. The data is open, crowd sourced, obtained from advanced satellite technology, and displayed using using Google Earth Engine to provide the most accurate and up-to-date images of world forest cover now available. A WRI blog post from February 20, 2014 uses the tool to visualize some of the world’s forest trends. Here, we have zoomed in to Liberia to see how this tool might be useful for landscape-level management.

Liberia is characterized by extensive tree cover, with just four percent primary forests and high levels of deforestation. Between 2000-2013, around 400,000 hectares of tree cover was lost. In 2012, an estimated ninety percent of Liberia’s greenhouse gas emissions came from land use change and forestry.

Thanks to these forests, most of the country is classified as a biodiversity hotspot by Conservation International, with many protected areas throughout the country. However, these lands are also important for human use, with extensive logging, mining, palm oil and wood fiber plantations dotting the land. The forestry sector makes up a significant percentage of the nation’s GDP, and employs thousands of workers.

In reality, land use classifications rarely capture the entire scope of activity on a parcel, and thus these type of maps are only able to provide a rough guide to complex social issues like the lack of lands set aside for indigenous groups in Liberia, which may contribute to conflicts between people and protected areas.  And they can only scratch the surface of issues like secure livelihoods, food security, ecosystem service degradation or biodiversity loss. Yet, by allowing policymakers, planners and researchers to visualize the areas where these conflicting uses occur, Global Forest Watch immediately increases understanding of the relationships between these factors and land use changes. And by examining particular hot spots of land use overlap or juxtaposition  allows us to see where intensive, integrated management is likely needed most. Look, for example, southeast of Lofa-Mano National Park in Liberia, where logging and, increasingly, oil palm development, threaten some of the highest density forest cover remaining in the country.

We’d love to hear how you would like to see this new open data used. Explore and tell us, what questions could data like this help answer?