Assessment of land cover and understanding of its dynamics can support sustainable natural resources management, environmental protection, and food security of Afghanistan.
In this aspect, a consistent land cover data for monitoring and change analysis using Landsat imagery and a harmonised classification systems, ICIMOD together with MAIL and National Statistic and Information Authority (NSIA) co-developed the National Land Cover Monitoring System (NLCMS) for Afghanistan. NLCMS uses state-of-the-art remote sensing science and technology on cloud-based the architecture such as Google Earth Engine, and a standard set of input data sources to generate high-quality land cover maps regularly between 2000 to 2018 at the regional and national levels.
The application provides easy access to the harmonised land cover database developed for Afghanistan over the different period of 2000 to 2018. It provides user friendly tools for generating statistics to understand the change processes and to support informed decisions.
The NLCMS system is customized from the Regional Land Cover Monitoring System (RLCMS) which is a collaborative effort between SERVIR-HKH at ICIMOD and SERVIR-Mekong at the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), with co-development partners - the United States Forest Services (USFS) and SilvaCarbon. The workshop will also present the adopted methodology used for the classification and validation processes.
Email: servirhkh@icimod.org
