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Mountain Green Cover Index Guide on Data Collection and Validation November 26,

Mountain Green Cover Index Guide on Data Collection and Validation November 26, 2018 This guide has been prepared to support countries in using Collect Earth, an FAO tool for the collection of relevant data to indicator 15.4.2 Mountain Green Cover Index. Please feel free to contact also someone from the Open Foris team through our community support forum or a direct email to marcelo.rezende@fao.org Content Content Don’t forget! Concept Methodology Software Installation Installing Google Earth Downloading Google Earth Setting Up Google Earth Installing Collect Earth Downloading Collect Earth Setting up Collect Earth Loading the Survey File Loading the Data for Validation Loading the Grid Collect Earth Interface Google Earth Engine Explorer Google Earth Engine Code Editor Plot Design and Interpretation Classification Saiku Don’t forget! This guide has been prepared with specific focus on the data collection and validation of existing data for the Sustainable Development Goal Indicator 15.4.2. However, Collect Earth has been extensively used for the reporting to other conventions as well, with a strong focus on the collect of Activity Data for the Greenhouse gases inventory to the UNFCCC and the data for the Land Degradation Neutrality Process of the UNCCD. For more information, please check: Open Foris Collect Earth Website Concepts and Definitions Concept The “Mountain Green Cover Index” (MGCI) measures changes of the green vegetation in mountain areas - i.e. forest, shrubs, trees, pasture land, crop land, etc. – to provide indications on the status of conservation of their environment. This index contributes to the achievement of SDG Goal 15: “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss” and more specifically to Target 15.4: “By 2030, ensure the conservation of mountain ecosystems, including their biodiversity, in order to enhance their capacity to provide benefits that are essential for sustainable development”. The index is under the custodian of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO) through the Mountain Partnership Secretariat. The Mountain Partnership (www.fao.org/mountain-partnership/en/) is a United Nations voluntary alliance that brings members together to work towards a common goal: improving the lives of mountain peoples and protecting mountain environments around the world. Launched as a voluntary United Nations (type 2) partnership by Italy, Switzerland, FAO and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Johannesburg in 2002, the Mountain Partnership has over 300 members from governments, intergovernmental organizations, civil society and the private sector. Its work is supported by a Secretariat hosted at FAO. The scientific mountain community recognizes that – with a few exceptions, such as the one produced by climate change at high altitudes and latitudes and in zones covered by glaciers - there is a direct correlation between the green coverage of mountain areas and mountain ecosystems’ state of health, which also relates to mountains’ capacity to fulfil their ecosystem roles. In this context, the objective of the Mountain Green Cover Index is to monitor changes in mountain vegetation and to provide information on forests and woody / vegetal cover in general. It aims at addressing the need for more detailed information about the status of mountain ecosystems at global and regional levels since there is a serious lack of those disaggregated data required for monitoring and analysing environmental trends on mountain areas. Methodology The Mountain Green Cover Index results from the interpretation of remote sensing images used for deriving land cover/land use patterns of the world’s mountain areas. Data is analyzed using the FAO Collect Earth software application developed by FAO and Google (consult the site http://www.openforis.org/tools/collect-earth.html for more details) while mountains are defined in accordance with the UNEP-WCMC mountain classification (Kapos et al. 2000). The estimates of the Mountain Green Cover Index take in consideration the distribution of forest, grassland and cropland classes as per the formula indicated below: Mountain Green Cover Index = (Area cover by Cropland + Area cover by Forest + Area cover by Grassland) Total Mountain Area The index has a range from 0 to 1, where 0 indicates no green vegetation and 1 indicates that the entire area is covered by vegetation. The amounts of land in square kilometers covered by each of these three IPCC land cover/land use classes are aggregated to calculate the size of the total mountain area that they cover. The Mountain Green Cover Index statistics are available at country level, disaggregated by IPCC land cover types and mountain elevation classes – both as absolute figures and percentage values. Workflow Software Installation Installing Google Earth Before installing Collect Earth, it is necessary to have Google Earth installed in your computer. This is a requirement, because Collect Earth runs together with Google Earth. Downloading Google Earth Google Earth can be easily downloaded in the Google Earth website. The latest version is the Google Earth Pro, but other versions would work as well. We recommend always to download the latest version. Click on the link and download it. Before downloading, the user has to agree with Google Earth’s Terms of Service. Setting Up Google Earth After the installation of Google Earth has finished, go to Tool > Options to change some setting that can facilitate the assessment of the sampling plots in Collect Earth. After clicking on Options, go to the Navigation tab and change the following settings: - Fly-To Speed: Put the bat in Fast; - In the Navigation box, mark only Do Not Automatically Tilt While Zooming. See image below for more information. Click Apply and you can close Google Earth. Installing Collect Earth Downloading Collect Earth Download the Collect Earth installer and double-click on the file to begin the installation process. Follow the instructions to complete the installation. English is the default language. Collect Earth Spanish and French versions are also available. Accept the license agreement and click Next. Click next to install Collect Earth on your C drive, or click on the folder icon to browse to and select an alternate location. Click next here and on the subsequent window to begin the installation. This window will appear when the installation is complete. Click finish. Depending upon your computer’s firewall settings, a security warning may pop up. If so, Click Allow access. Setting up Collect Earth Once installed, the Collect Earth Launcher can be found in the Windows Start Menu. Just search for the Launch Collect Earth file and click on it to run the application. When Collect Earth is opened, it also opens automatically Google Earth. The Collect Earth software is represented by the window below, where operators have to write a name in order to proceed and click Update. Loading the Survey File A Collect Earth Survey is a file that contains all the questions and attributes that the operators will have to fill for each plot. It can be design by the user using the Open Foris Collect software. The survey that comes with Collect Earth when you first download the software is a demo survey and needs to be replaced with the survey designed to collect the Mountain Green Cover Index. In order to download the correct survey file, please go the this link: MGCI Survey Repository. In this link, you will find the MGCI Survey files for Collect Earth in different languages. Select the file with the language you are more comfortable with, click with the right-button and select Download. Run the file after download to open the survey. If you followed the steps correctly, you should have the Collect Earth windows as shown above. Note that the name of the survey appears on top of the Collect Earth window and should be Collect Earth - Validation - Mountain Green Cover Index. For the validation purpose we suggest that the Operator name is composed of the word Validation and the country’s name (see above). Loading the Data for Validation The data used for the MGCI will be shared by the FAO team during the workshop. In order to load it into the Survey, go to Tools > Data Import/Export > Import new Data from ZIP (compressed XML). Navigate to the file that was shared with you and select it and click Open. Loading the Grid In Collect Earth, go to Tools > Properties. In the Sample Data tab, click on Browse… and search for the grid file containing the plots for your country. Collect Earth Interface Collect Earth works together with Google Earth to allow user to collect data from Google’s free catalog of very high-resolution imagery. In the image above, the left-panel (yellow box) displays the sampling plots used in the assessment. Different surveys can have different sampling grids and they display the status of the assessment of the plot. Green - Plot saved. Orange - Plot not finalized. Red- Plot not started. In the image he red box shows the data collection cards/forms, where users will enter the information based on their interpretation of the image and ancillary information for each plot. The blue area indicates a menu with tools from Google Earth that can uploads/Litterature/ mgci-guide.pdf