Brazilian agency providing remote sensing training for African countries

Brazil’s Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE – National Institute for Space Research) has been providing training for Earth observation (EO) specialists from African and other countries (in Asia and Latin America), under its Capacitree programme, which is a capacity-building project in forest monitoring by satellite. Capacitree is coordinated by the Amazon Regional Centre, one of INPE’s three regional centres. Brazil is the only country located in the tropical region that has a forest monitoring programme, and since 2010 has offered its expertise to countries interested in maintaining their forests. “Brazil has a very robust forest monitoring programme, the biggest in the world,” points out INPE EO Directorate head Dr Leila Fonseca. It started in 1988 with using satellite-based remote sensing to monitor the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.