NORTH POTOMAC, Md. – TerraPulse, the premier provider of artificial intelligence for monitoring large land areas, announced today the company has been selected by the countries of Belize, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic to map forest cover as part of a sweeping forest activity study funded by The World Bank.
Through the program, terraPulse will apply scientifically peer-reviewed AI to nearly forty years of satellite imagery to support the countries’ monitoring of forest assets. The approach fuses data from local sources with global satellite data from NASA; the results will enable carbon modeling and the development of greenhouse gas inventories for the United Nations’ Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) land sector initiative.
The project is part of the REDD+ Readiness process, moderated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which supports countries’ efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and to foster sustainable management of forests.
“The process of protecting natural assets can be incredibly challenging,” says Dr. Julian Gonzalo, Senior Carbon Finance Specialist at World Bank Group.
“The challenge is that repeatable (short-cycle monitoring), large-scale (jurisdictional) monitoring using in situ measurements is not easily scalable. Countries participating in World Bank Emissions Reduction Programs need a robust, transparent, and replicable approach to provide reliable estimates of land use and land cover change for estimating forest reference emission levels and reporting periodically about emissions and emission reductions,” says Dr. Gonzalo. “Companies like terraPulse help bridge that information gap by using remotely-sensed data and machine learning to provide reliable insights.”
“We are honored to be part of this effort, and we look forward to a long and productive partnership with the governments of Belize, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic,” says Saurabh Channan, CEO and co-founder of terraPulse.
TerraPulse’s prior experience supporting REDD+ and similar programs includes national forest mapping for the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Forest Management Bureau (FMB); the Dominican Republic through the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility; and Myanmar in partnership with NASA and the Smithsonian Institution.
About terraPulse:
Founded in 2014, terraPulse develops cloud-based solutions for monitoring ecosystem change at local, national, and global scales. Using peer-reviewed methodologies that apply big data and machine-learning to satellite imagery, terraPulse has produced the world’s first sub-hectare resolution maps of global tree-canopy cover, surface water, and urbanization. With unmatched speed, accuracy and granularity—down to individual property parcels—terraPulse enables governments, nonprofits, businesses, and academic institutions to monitor, protect and commercialize natural assets–including the rapidly growing market for carbon offsets.
