The sustainable management of forests is increasingly recognized as an urgent challenge. The future of forests has serious socio-economic implications and impacts global concerns that include accelerating biodiversity loss and climate change. Given the broad diversity of forest environments worldwide, the challenge is highly complex and demands effective monitoring capabilities.

GMES Service Element Forest Monitoring (GSE-FM) is a unique multi-disciplinary enterprise that delivers a suite of standardized products and services to support forest monitoring activities.

GSE-FM is strongly connected with a partner project named Kyoto Inventory. The Kyoto Inventory (KYOTO INV) was a component of the ESA Data User Programme (DUP) that defined and developed key inputs required for UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and Kyoto reporting including area assessments and classifications for forests and country-specific land use. After three years of demonstration services, the activities have been set to continue under the banner of a broader project called GSE-Forest Monitoring.

GSE Forest Monitoring supplies accurate, timely and readily available information on the state of forests to a variety of users and beneficiaries. The products and services are designed to support more informed decisions, operational activities and improved policies that significantly enable sustainable forest management. Each service consists of a dedicated set of products which are designed to support the user by using Earth Observation technology.

All products and services can be found and downloaded through the Online Catalogue

The service is very useful for Environment Agencies, Ministries (Environment, Agriculture,...) and Institutional organizations (national boards, institutes, ...).

As in Kyoto Inventory project, Planetek Italia continues to provide maps for the Spanish Ministerio de Medio Ambiente (MMA), Direcciòn General para la Biodiversidad (DGB), by covering the following areas:

Lleida ,Girona Barcellona,Tarragona, Badajoz and Caceres.

The products, obtained by processing Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 data (spatial resolution 30 m), are:

• Land Use Map
• Forest Map
• Land Use Change Map

Planetek Italia provides the previous three products by covering an area of 21.800 Km2.