By Tom Kiptenai
On May 6-17, Conservation International’s Vital Signs program facilitated advanced training on spatial analysis of land use/land cover change for a technical team of Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry in Perth, Australia.
Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) under the Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT), the training benefitted the technical group in charge of land use/land cover within the Kenya’s System for Land-based Emission Estimation for Kenya (SLEEK).
The trainees were taken through various key modules that empowered them to correct some inconsistencies in Kenya’s land use/land cover maps by filling data gaps and correcting erroneous classification of information.
Like many other countries, Kenya has developed land use/land cover maps from 1990 to 2018 to enable accurate national reporting to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in line with its obligations as a signatory of the Paris Agreement. The reporting is due in September 2019.
The maps have been developed using remote sensing, which has proven to be a useful tool in helping countries systematically monitor and assess changes in their land use and land cover. Data is obtained from satellite imagery dating back to 1972 when the Landsat program for capturing comprehensive satellite images of the earth was launched.
However, the majority of the countries have generated maps which lacked consistency, mainly due to gaps in data and varying interpretations by experts. All these results in products that can give inconsistent and inaccurate fluxes in Greenhouse gases as well as land use land cover changes.
For more information, email Tom Kiptenai: tkiptenai-kemboi@conservation.org