MapBiomas

Project

WHAT IS THE MAPBIOMAS BOLIVIA INITIATIVE?

The "Annual Land Cover and Land Use Mapping in Bolivia" Project, is an initiative that involves a collaborative network of specialists in remote sensing, GIS, and programming experts. It uses cloud processing and automated classifiers developed and operated from the Google Earth Engine platform to generate a historical series of annual land cover and land use maps of Bolivia.

ORIGIN

The Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN), is a member of the Red Amazónica de Información Socioambiental Georreferenciada (RAISG), where this type of information is generated in a coordinated manner with other countries in the basin to achieve the same objectives. In 2009, as part of the work with RAISG, the construction of deforestation maps of the Bolivian Amazon using increasingly advanced satellite data processing tools began. In search of new alternatives for process automation and timely information generation, in March 2017, RAISG, in agreement with the General Coordination of MapBiomas Network, created the MapBiomas Amazonia initiative, of which FAN is a member. As part of the work with RAISG and MapBiomas, FAN has achieved the First Collection of Annual Land Cover and Land Use Maps for the entire Bolivian territory for the period 1985-2021. Thanks to this collaborative effort, these maps will be available on an interactive platform for the MapBiomas Bolivia initiative.
As part of the work with RAISG and MapBiomas, FAN managed in 2022 to launch the First Collection of Annual Land Cover and Land Use Maps for the entire Bolivian territory for the period 1985 - 2021. Thanks to this collaborative effort and the constant desire to improve, to date, the Second Collection of Maps is already public, for the years 1985 - 2023 with more classes detected.

PURPOSE

Contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of land use in Bolivia based on:

  • The development and implementation of a fast, reliable and low-cost methodology to generate annual maps of land cover and land use, from 1985 to the present (and then updated annually).
  • Creation of an open web platform to facilitate the dissemination of the methodology and access to the results of different user profiles. 
  • Establish a collaborative network of specialists in the countries for the mapping of land cover and land use and the dynamics of change.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE INITIATIVE

  • Network collaboration with the responsible institutions of different countries.
  • Distributed and automated data processing through an alliance with Google Earth Engine.
  • Work aimed at generating an open and replicable platform.
  • Collaborative platform designed to incorporate and welcome contributions from the scientific community interested in collaborating.