Establishment of Forest Status Maps

Summary

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Program “Lowering Emissions in Asia’s Forests” (LEAF) seeks to strengthen the capacity of developing countries in the Asian region to produce meaningful and sustained reductions in GHG emissions from the forestry and land use sectors, thereby allowing these countries to benefit from the emerging international REDD+ program framework.

In Viet Nam the USAID LEAF program was approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). USAID LEAF will provide support for the successful implementation of the Vietnam National REDD+ Action Program (NRAP). The province of Lam Dong has been selected as one of six pilot provinces under the NRAP to pilot REDD+. USAID LEAF is supporting the development of the Lam Dong Provincial REDD+ Action Plan (PRAP).

This report summarizes the tasks, methodology and outcomes in assessing historical forest and land use change between 1990 and 2010. Two distinct tasks are described. The first is the development of historical land use /forest cover maps for 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010. The second task described is the time series analysis to assess forest and land use change for four time periods, 1990-1995, 1995-2000, 2000-2005 and 2005-2010.