The Landscapes Portal is part of efforts at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) to advance the use of geoscience beyond conventional geographical information systems (GIS). It builds on recent advances in web map server technology and novel analytical approaches for landscape data management, mining, analysis and visualization. The ultimate goal of the Landscapes Portal is to improve our understanding of drivers of change in complex social-ecological systems.
The Landscapes Portal has been applied in a number of projects in the global tropics. Specifically, it is being used in the Sentinel Landscapes Initiative as part of the CGIAR research program for forest, trees and agroforestry (FTA) in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, India and Southeast Asia. It is being applied in studies of soil and land health, including for monitoring of semi-arid rangeland systems.
The analytical platform which is part of the Landscapes Portal is set up to analyze integrated landscape level datasets. Further, the portal serves as a platform for spatial (landscape) data sharing between practitioners, planners, policy makers, researchers and the general public.
Tor-Gunnar Vagen, Senior Scientist - World Agroforestry Centre
Development Practitioners, Researchers