Collect Earth Online was highlighted by multiple participants at the Global Forest Observations Initiative Plenary 2025, held recently in Bali, Indonesia. This year’s plenary theme was “Forests and the marvel of monitoring.”
The Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) is a partnership for assisting tropical countries to monitor their forest and carbon resources. GFOI is coordinated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and supports countries in developing robust national forest monitoring systems (NFMS). GFOI helps governments produce consistent, transparent, and verifiable data to meet international reporting requirements, including those under REDD+ and the Paris Agreement. Its partners, such as Global Observations of Forest Cover and Land-use Dynamics (GOFC–GOLD) and the World Bank, work together to align global resources, promote open data, and strengthen technical capacity for forest monitoring.
Collect Earth Online directly supports the goals of the GFOI by providing an open, accessible, and scientifically sound platform for satellite image interpretation. CEO enables countries to conduct transparent, sample-based forest assessments consistent with GFOI guidance, using open data and replicable methodologies. By lowering technical barriers and supporting collaboration among national experts, CEO helps countries implement the kind of reliable and verifiable monitoring systems that GFOI promotes worldwide.
CEO is used extensively by FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA), including in their most recent Remote Sensing Survey report released in conjunction with the Plenary. FAO’s Xavier De Lamo presented on FRA’s use of CEO, including how CEO makes remote sensing data collection possible.
Watch the whole presentation on YouTube.
The country of Peru is also using CEO to facilitate the collection of land use change data. William Llactayo León, the Director of Land Use Planning and Natural Resources Management for Peru presented in Spanish on the country’s use of CEO along with sister product SEPAL.
Watch the whole presentation on YouTube (Spanish).
Papua New Guinea is using CEO for their NFMS and for pre-monitoring for Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) participation (Read about how CEO supports TFFF here). Mr. Oala Iuda, Senior Forest Land Use Monitoring Officer for the Climate Change Branch, Forest Policy Planning Directorate, Papua New Guinea Forest Authority (PNGFA) spoke about the country’s process and how using CEO helped improve data collection quality.
Key callouts included CEO’s ability to integrate high-resolution basemaps to enable coordinated, traceable interpretation and how QAQC improved data quality.
Watch the whole presentation here.
For more information: Plenary 2025 | Global Forest Observations Initiative
Watch more presentations here: GFOI Plenary 2025 – YouTube
