 Okay. Okay. Let's begin. Welcome to today's webinar. Forest data and free and open source solutions for climate action. Thanks again to all of you for joining us already. It's great to see you here. Today we're going to talk about the importance of national forest monitoring systems to support climate action. We're going to share knowledge and experience from Ghana and Papua New Guinea and launch FAO's latest free open source tool to support forest monitoring. Today's session will be in English and we will have four presentations followed by a 15 minute question and answer session where we want to hear from you. And in total the session will last for one hour and 20 minutes. So just a quick word on the format of this zoom, your microphones are muted to minimize audio problems as we have quite a lot of participants, which is great. The session is however all about interacting with you. So we want to give you the opportunity to ask questions to the experts that you've been that you may who's working maybe aware of and take this rare opportunity and don't hesitate to ask questions in the question and answer box to each of our speakers as you listen to their presentations. And if somebody has already posed a question or that interest you you can also give it a virtual thumbs up thumbs up in the in the question and answer box. You will have noticed already maybe that there is both a question and answer box and a chat. So just to repeat the question and answer box is we want to keep that for the questions to our present presenters, our colleagues will be helping us helping me select the most appropriate questions from there. And to make it make sure that it's easier for us to find and respond to all the questions. Please keep them in the question and answer box and to reserve instead the chat box for if you have any technical problems, general comments or just want to say hello. Just remember when you're writing in the chat box to to address the question to everybody and not just the panelists so that everybody can see. So the audience as well. And in the question and answer box if you address your questions to the specific presenter that would also really help us in responding. This webinar will be recorded just to let you know, and we will share the recording with you afterwards. So let me quickly introduce myself. I'm Emily Donigan, and I work for the National Forest monitoring team at the FAO food and agriculture organization, and I'll be your moderator for today's session. So yeah, I see some of you have already done it but please introduce yourselves as well in the chat. It's great to see who's here with us. And without further ado, I'd also like to introduce you to our first speaker, Fabio Pitchinich, he works at the FAO eLearning Academy. Fabio helps managing coordinate the delivery of the Academy's extensive portfolio of eLearning courses, blended learning programs for the benefit of FAO member countries. So thanks for being with us today Fabio over to you. Thank you so much, Emily for this introduction. So good afternoon, good morning and good evening to everyone. I would like to greet you all and welcome to the session on forest data and free open source solution for climate action on behalf of Christina Petracchi, was the leader of the FAO learning Academy. Christina, as you, as many of you already know belongs to the joint series that we organized together with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia. And with future food institute and the French training and research Alliance for Agriculture, food environment and global health agreement which is here with us today. As you know already the idea of our joint webinars as many of you participated also in other session is to promote the thematic areas covered in our multilingual learning courses that we always make available to everyone in our website, and that are available, completely free of charge as a global public good. So I would like to invite you after this session perhaps to have a look at the offering of the file learning Academy. You will find several learning courses related to the topic that we are presenting today and I will come back to that later on. During the Q&A after the presentations I will provide you with a series of link of the learning courses that are related to today's topic just keep in mind that although this webinar does not foresee a certificate of participation. You can also stay in a digital badge, taking one of the related learning courses and passing the evaluation with a score of 75% or higher. So once again, the list of all the forestry courses will be shared with you very soon. For the time being I just would like to wish you all an excellent webinar and Emily over to you. Thank you. Thanks a lot Fabio. Yeah, fantastic. Everyone, go ahead and check out the extent of offer of courses available on FAO's eLearning Academy. Fabio is going to share those links in a bit and you can also browse through the offering on the link that's that's on your screen right now as well. Next, we have a presentation from Marcio Condor. Marcio is leading the global project called Building Global Capacity to Increase Transparency in the Forest Sector or CBIT Forest. Implemented by the FAO and financed by the CBIT Trust Fund of the Global Environment Facility, which was established 30 years ago on the eve of the Rio Earth Summit to tackle our planet's most pressing environmental problems. Marcio is coordinating activities to make forest data more transparent, accessible and available, and helping developing countries meet the Paris Agreement's enhanced transparency framework, the ETF, in collaboration with key stakeholders. She is coordinating activities to make forest data more transparent. So over to you, Marcio. Thank you, Emily. And let me start by sharing with you all three key messages to introduce this webinar link to the implementation of the CBIT Forest Project. Building capacity and improving access to information and data are the two key areas the project focused on in order to enhance transparency of climate change reporting. A robust national forest monitoring system requires good data. And good data means greater transparency. Free open source solutions enables countries to build more comprehensive, reliable monitoring systems that will help them track forest cover land use and climate mitigation activities. Knowledge sharing activities, new data sharing and data analysis and visualization platform, new data sets made available and capacities built in targeted countries on data management. These are some ways the project has worked to improve access and transparency of forest data. The project represents an adaptive and flexible response to the challenge posed by COVID-19. It swiftly moved to fully virtual implementation, swapping in countries workshop for e-learning courses and webinars. In the next slides, let me share the latest updates from the CBIT Forest Project. It is a two-year global project to set up developing countries ability to collect, analyze and disseminate forest-related data to make forest data transparent and accessible in line with enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement. It aims to increase institutional and technical capacities and to boost knowledge sharing and awareness raising about the ETF, particularly in the forest sector. Organizing sub-regional and national virtual webinars to build capacities and enhance their national forest monitoring systems started in 26 countries, as well as 187 countries and territories included as part of the global network of national correspondence for the global forest resource assessment from. How? Upgraded file global forest resource assessment for 2020 reporting and dissemination platform to make forest data open and accessible to all. New functionalities are now available since its launch in July last year and is available in six UN languages. A tool developed to facilitate the assessment of gaps and needs in countries national forest monitoring systems, including an informational note for policymakers and a quick guidance for practitioners. All is available in multiple languages. Outreach and sharing of cases studies and best practice on transparency in the forest sector. Last year, cases studies from Costa Rica, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bangladesh were launched. Let me share new cases in the next few slides. Knowledge and training material developed also including self-paced e-learning courses on forest and transparency available already in English, Spanish, French, and Chinese, and soon in Arabic and Russian. And three additions of the massive open online courses held simultaneously in English, French, and Spanish to enable access to knowledge about the enhanced transparency framework and forest. Check our work in the one-yearing numbers brochure, which contains all activities and products of the project. The number of direct individuals who have benefited from pilot country works activities, regional networks, webinars, e-learning and massive open online course was around 7,000 from around 120 countries. Overall, of those participating in the project activities, 39% were women. Let me first share some updates after our last webinar on forest data for climate action, the importance of legal and institutional frameworks, where we launched the paper on institutionalization of forest data. Now the paper is also available in Spanish and French. And of course you can consult the brief we have prepared that can assist countries in assessing and identifying relevant aspects that might be included in a national forest monitoring system legal instrument also available in multiple languages. But today, I'm really happy to share with you our new set of cases studies on forest and transparency in multiple languages, coming from Chile, Ghana, and Papua New Guinea. These cases studies can serve as guides for other countries just beginning to implement a national forest monitoring system, or also for those that want to improve and learn more. It's a pleasure to have with us representative from Ghana, Papua New Guinea, sharing their knowledge and experience today. Thanks all for your attention. And I encourage you to follow us and learn about our activities by consulting the webpage of the project or our trailer board. And please follow us and contribute with these global effort by sharing information with your colleagues and networks. Back to you and me. Thanks so much for SEO. Yeah, to everyone listening in. Take a look at those case studies that receive us just mentioned. Go on the CPI T for us website and take, take advantage of all the great material that's being generated and is there for you to use. Any questions for SEO or for any of our speakers start putting them into the Q&A, the question and answer box, the Q&A box. And it will also help if you write the name of who you want to address the question to just as a reminder. So as received as mentioned, today we're going to hear from representatives from both Ghana and Papua New Guinea, on their experience working on national forest monitoring in their countries. So first off, we hear from Thomas Jambra, who is the manager for measuring reporting and verification and red plus programs at the Climate Change Directorate of the Forestry Commission of Ghana. Thomas also coordinates efforts towards the full operationalization of Ghana's national forest monitoring system. Thomas, it's great to have you here with us again today. Please, over to you. Thank you Emily, it's also great to share Ghana's experience as always. And I want to thank FAO for giving Ghana this platform to share our experience with the whole world as well. I can see more than 200 participants online. And it's really great to have everyone. So thank you very much. And basically, want to talk about a start for national forest monitoring system for monitoring land use capacities in Ghana. This is going to be a very short presentation. It gives a highlight of whatever is going on in Ghana. I believe as Rocio presented, can find some details in the online link that she presented. And subsequently, if there are questions even beyond this particular platform, we are always open and we are always ready to answer them. Thank you. So one key thing is that globally all countries are moving or have made substantial advancement, which I get towards developing and operationalizing their national forest monitoring system. Primarily to comply with the measuring and reporting and verification framework set out by the UNFCCC. And more so recently under the Pairi agreement, we have the enhanced transparency framework. So efforts nationally and globally are towards enhancing national forest monitoring system frameworks so that we can report transparently and more accurately as we go forward. Ghana is no exception in this direction. What the steps that Ghana have taken is that Ghana first of all we've developed what we call a national forest monitoring system framework document, which is a blueprint for the development of Ghana's national forest monitoring system. You see that in that framework we have three main components. And the components are one, the greenhouse gas inventory for surplus accounting. Two, we have environmental and social safe gas. Once whatever we are doing needs to happen in a right and safe environment and that's where we have the safe gas component as well so that we can monitor all of these at the same time. And also we have the registry so that any emission reduction so called would be accounted for on that particular platform as well. So that's how Ghana sees this happening. So far we've made lots of progress. We have developed a standard operating manuals 12 of them that gives guidance as to how some of these things with the data is reported on data is collected. The next slide I'll give a pictorial view of how fast Ghana is looking at in all of this. When you see as I indicated component one of the national forest monitoring system you're looking at the greenhouse gas emissions. We have the component to looking at the social and environmental safe gas and we have the registry system. The component one is mainly made up the national forest inventory systems that we have in country. The forest areas that changes the land use and land use changes, the forest carbon stocks to basically does the component one that Ghana is working on at the moment. The component two we have the social and environmental safe gas, giving the framework within which any activity that is being undertaken here would within which that would work as well. And having done that, we are looking at a registry system checking the emission reductions that Ghana is looking at all of these envisage will be put on a web portal, a web portal so that we have a transparent data enough. And everyone who wants to check based on the data access can have information as and when, and we have a reporting format also as well so that we can be generating reports as and when needed. If it's quarterly we have such reports on if it's monthly, if it is yearly as well we have all such reports on and any data through that comes from Ghana will be routed through this particular system that Ghana is developing at the moment. Now, the objective of this particular system is mainly of the NFM is mainly to serve as the main source for the land use sector in Ghana, so that we don't have so many reports sitting in people's texts or people in other institutions, and this will be the main source of reports, and the main source of that anyone in Ghana outside Ghana that would get this want anything of Ghana in the land sector will get this report from and Ghana is implementing the red plus mechanism, and this platform is expected to provide information on Ghana's red plus mechanism, and also all related activities to the public we want to be as transparent as possible, we may be reporting that we are doing abcd with active z xyz, are these verifiable, are these happening in a framework that is sustainable, are we ensuring environmental integrity all these need to be reported and these to be showcased to the public as well so that they can question how we are going about all of these that will be enhancing our transparency, to enhance the transparent way within which we do all of this and the reports, as and when appropriate as and when needed by the public, and the system is would come up with needs, assess needs so that as and when you need any information, you the system provides that information as well for the user. Now, we have this is not just a one size I indicated earlier that the objective is to look at having a data system for the land sector of Ghana. So this is not just a key thing just for the forestry commission of Ghana is just for the key stakeholders who are involved in all of this, the forex, the forest sector or sub sector of Ghana's economy. When you look at we have at the policy level we have a ministry, so the ministry will be looking at how the policy level related to the national forest monitoring system, we have the forestry commission itself where I am. We will be looking at the technical side of it, we have the resource management support center, the information technology department all of the forestry commission so they will be providing the overall technical support for this particular exercise. We have other institutions that will support so any support to the country, be it from the FAO which we've received previously from the forest carbon partnership facility which we received as well is routed through the system so that no system comes in out of the country to produce a parallel system we have one system and if there are weaknesses in there is evaluated and all support is routed through that particular system. Overall there needs to be a one body that is coordinating all of this and we have in Ghana the national red plus secretariat that is coordinating all of the Ghana of Ghana's national forest monitoring system. I will move to some sources factors that we have produced out of this. One key thing is that the integration and of consistency with existing sources of information. We've conducted a national review of all functionalities of any semblance of national forestry system existing in various institutions, and we are trying to integrate all of them so that we can respond to the various needs of all the stakeholders to be the private sector, the CSOs and whatever whatever they have on national forest forest monitoring system we've conducted a review of such a system. And through this process also as well Ghana has been able to generate reports, we have 2017 forest reference level for instance generated out of this particular system, and we have a 2021 updated report which is currently undergoing our assessment system with the UNF triple C. And one key thing is that through this particular process, we have a team consisting of people from various sectors in the forest, various institutions in the forest sector. We have people from academia who provide who provide technical stopping backstopping from their end, we have people from the research institutes, who will be also giving guidance on the research that they've done, realize that in most of our publications we have some papers that are published in country as well these are coming from the people within the group that we have put together we have people from the CSOs and who provide understanding from the end as well. We have community people who provide guidance as to the local knowledge that you can bring in as well so we see some of these things as some of the key sources factors that Ghana has put together to ensure that we have a robust and more transparent forest, national forest monitoring system. Having said this, it's not all rosy that there are some key challenges that's gonna we're experiencing at the moment and the key one is the lack of sustainable and predictable funding for red plus investment. You know, most of these things fun requires lots of funding so it is quite challenging in country as well if the fund is not sustainable they are mainly the funding have many come from donor dependents and that that has been a challenge for us in country as well. The key thing is that at least we have a framework document that guides the process so any donor support that comes in goes into that implementing that particular framework that we have that has been the flip side to this otherwise this is mainly largely do not dependant and that's a challenge for us and we need more institutional support and capacity building for data processing and analysis. You realize that in my previous slide I share something with that we've had support from FAO for instance that have supported given technical support in the in the past or currently given technical support for us in some aspect of the national forest monitoring system and we need to undertake some capacity needs and see where we can strengthen or we can strengthen some of these support that's to come so we lack some capacity somewhere but on you know that that's the key or another key challenge the funding and also the lack of technical support in some areas that we have at the moment. Now going forward in running up going forward there are some key things that I want to bring in in in one is I indicated that we have institutional representations and all that we need to extend that we realize that it's not as exhaustive we need to bring in more people so that we have more institutions represented so that's the information that to be produced on the national forest monitoring system where portal will be more robust than we have currently and that's what we are we seek to do. Currently in country we have the greenhouse gas inventory reports that is produced generally we have some MOUs with various institutions that's what we intend to promote we have more MOUs with various institutions. So that it's not like an individual thing that is being undertaken there will be institutional ownership for whatever Ghana is particular we are doing at the moment and what when individual leaves leave the institutions that there will be others will be representing them so so that's what we intend doing at the moment. So the other key thing is that we are undertaking more technical and capacity needs assessment so that any support that comes in will not be generic, but it will be targeted and would have undertaken the needs and where the support must go, and we can make kids for that going forward. So, these are the key things that Ghana is doing at the moment, and thank you very much for that. And I would like to run up by reading my conclusion that Ghana is putting in place the necessary protocols to provide a more transparent robots and comprehensive national forest monitoring system, which will offer multiple stakeholders benefits according to their own specific needs. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Thomas for sharing your experience there and developing the national forest monitoring system. Also the challenges that you faced that was really interesting. I particularly like the slide where you showed the three three different components and then also the web the fourth component component of the web portal. What cuts across is cross cutting across all the other three components and there's a real vehicle for transparency so that was really great to see and I think it relates as well to our next presentation, which is about software tools that are helping to make the process of forest monitoring more efficient and efficient. Our next presenter is laurie visa, who, excitingly is here to release a brand new software tool called arena arena is the latest addition to FAOs open forest software suite, which is designed for forest and land monitoring. So, Larry, thanks for being here with us over to you to tell us more. Thank you Emily. Okay, you see my screen. Yeah, perfect. Okay. Good morning, good afternoon and evening everyone, and welcome to the follow this here about new open forest tools open forest is an FAO initiative to develop and share free open source solutions for environmental monitoring. The open forest tools are used in forest assessments and in land monitoring surveys globally, and they have got the white user community during the past decade. So our open forest team is proud to launch a new arena platform created with the final source support by the UN red program and technical experts working at the forestry division. So let's take a look. What do we offer for open forest tools at this time. So what is arena arena is a new open forest application that offers methods and tools for storing, managing and processing survey data, such as field inventory data. It works in the secure cloud server, and it combines the main features of two existing open forest tools open forest collect and collect. The main advantages of arena, they are as follows. So this is a platform in the cloud that enables easy access to more flexible data management utilization and processing, particularly the system enables collaboration and data sharing in the working group. In the cloud based application, there is no worries about the maintenance because all the updates are instantly available for all users. Similarly, there are no need for doing per user installations in the local machines. So, next a few words about the application areas. The arena offers methods and tools for collecting, hosting and archiving of various types of data and processing. For example, it can host forest monitoring data, particularly data collected in multi-cycle forest inventories, such as in the national forest inventories. It can also host and process a botanical survey data or socio-conflict data just as collected with help of questionnaires. And other survey data, for example, collected in agricultural studies. For data processing, for example, when computing of forest biomass and carbon stock estimates, arena offers an integrated RStudio server for the programmers. Data processing can be handled with the help of our language script. The current status of arena version 1.0 is that this is a starting point for the new generation of online tools. It offers a technical platform which will be soon expanded. The core part of the system is the database management system that enables extension of applications to be built around and on the top of it. Because this presentation will give just a quick snapshot of how arena works, we will later on this year organize online training events. And we will also prepare video tutorials to show how to use the platform. Next, I want to tell you what are the features in the pipeline. These are particularly templates for data processing, in-built methods for data aggregation and reporting and the data dashboards, and functions for geospatial analysis and connections with data exchange to C++. In addition, we have in the planning stage a new collect mobile application that will be utilized in arena technology. Let's take a look at what arena, how it looks in the action. OpenForest Arena is a new cloud platform for flexible data management, utilization and processing. Here we show the main features of arena. The user first has to log into the system. Arena offers a dashboard for managing your surveys. A survey is a schema in arena's database management system. The survey can contain several properties such as name, label, survey languages, spatial reference system from app data and inventory cycle. The left side panel contains all the available tools. Let's first take a look at the form designer. The form designer is the main tool for building a new survey. It offers simple methods for adding new pages, entities and attributes for data entry. A survey can contain multiple subpages in order to separate the survey into logical elements. The input elements can be located easily in the form and resized as needed. Forms can also contain tables as shown here. Let's first reorganize the item on this form. Each data attribute contains multiple properties. Here we see some advanced features such as the required checkbox. And then in the validation section, arena opens the screen with an expression editor. The expression editor is an easy to use tool to add and modify logical rules that are needed to carry out data checks in order to guarantee better quality data. Okay, let's jump back and quickly reorganize the items in this page. And we go to preview the survey. And in the preview mode, we can test the data entry forms. For example, we can test that values can be correctly inputted and that all validation rules work as expected. Once all the issues in the survey are fixed and the survey is ready to be used, it needs to be published. This process requires running several steps in order to guarantee the correctness and consistency of the data entered to the survey. Here I will cancel the process and jump forwards. Let's take a look at server hierarchy. In this section we can view a tree diagram that displays the hierarchical structure of the data. The diagram can also be expanded and we see all entities and data attributes that are stored in the database. Next, the categories view offers tools for management of categorical information. Categories are coded lists that can be used with coded variables such as land use or administrative units. The taxonomies view is for adding species lists into arena. Here we have a list of bamboo species in this survey. The list can be imported and exported from external files. Okay, let's next see how the data entry view looks in arena. Here we have a list of all inputted records and we open one. Arena opens up the last published survey. Here we can view and edit the data and for example, in this forest infantry data, we can find sample plot data of the selected cluster. This data is now locked but can be opened and added again as needed. So let's move back and see the next feature, data explorer. Data explorer is a query tool for viewing the data in tabular format. Here we can view both inputted data and computed result variables. Let's see how this tool works. We can filter the data by various types and pick up and add attributes to the table. So we can scroll and browse through the data. The data can be viewed in multiple ways. It can be easily filtered. So let's make a logical rule and show only the trees with diameter greater or equal to 30 centimeters in the data explorer. Here they are. Next, we sort this data by ascending order and browse through the records. However, let's take off the rule by resetting the filtering rule. So the data explorer is a handy tool to view the selected subset of the data. But when all data are needed, they can be exported and then downloaded by a user who has the right to do so. Here we have a tool to generate a validation report to get a list of erroneous data. And the data processing part is under chains. In this view, we control the calculation chains in the survey and we open a chain and go to the view, the ready-made calculation scripts for trees. Now I add a numeric result variable for trees and add a new variable to compute the below ground biomass of a tree. First it needs a name, label and other properties. The calculation scripts can be viewed here. And the variable can be set inactive or back to active. For doing the final editing of the scripts, they all need to be processed in RStudio. First the survey needs to be published again, and then we start RStudio by clicking this button. This takes a moment. And we copy these commands, then click OK, and we get access to RStudio. RStudio is used to finalize the data processing scripts, test and run them. So as we can see, this requires some expert knowledge, but the scripts need to be written probably only once for a survey. However, to make this easier, FAO experts are working to add templates with common scripts into this platform. The user management is the final feature to show. It is a tool for administrators to manage the users. The content of this view depends on the user's access role. Okay, that's the story. Very quickly done. And how to get access to this platform. So it depends on your role, that how do you position yourself. So if you are familiar with some knowledge of a database design, you can become a survey designer. And you need to fill in the form that is available on this address www.openforrestarena.org. There you can send an email to us and we can add your name to the list of survey administrators so that you can start there. You can start by updating your own service or using templates. Secondly, that if you are the end users of existing service or start entering data, you need to request an access to the particular survey from your local survey administrator. This person can invite you into open forest arena. Thank you very much. And you are willing to visit our website at openforrest.org. So over to you, Emily. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Lowry. Very exciting to have a new tool added to the very successful suite of software that open forest already is. To those who are listening, don't hesitate as Lowry just said to check out those tools on the open forest.org website. They're available there free and open source. So get inspired for the different analyses and database realizations that you can do on there for forest and wider land monitoring. Just a quick reminder before we move on to the next presentation to, if you want to address any questions to your speakers. So Lowry, Thomas or Cio or up next is Elizabeth. Just please put them in the question and answer box so that we can we can find and respond to them more easily. That will be great. So next we hear from another country that has used open forest extensively in its national forest monitoring activities, and that is Papua New Guinea. So today here with us we have Elizabeth Kaidom, who is the acting climate change officer with the Red Plus and climate change branch under the resource planning and development directorate of the Papua New Guinea forest authority. She was involved in the first multi-purpose national forest inventory for the country, and has also been involved in using the open forest tools since inception in Papua New Guinea in updating forest and land use information. Elizabeth, thanks so much for being here with us today. Okay, thanks Emily and good morning. Good afternoon and probably a good evening to the others as well. Thank you to FAO for giving us the opportunity to present on Papua New Guinea's experience with using the open forest tools. This presentation is just a short presentation of what PNG was able to use in terms of the tools that were developed by FAO. So this is basically a background. We have two systems. One is the collected and the Terra PNG. So for the for PNG forest authority, we used to collect it system and our colleagues from the climate change development authority uses the Terra PNG. So you will notice that since the open forest tools were made available, PNG started using this way back in 2013, which we were able to determine the different land use and forest types that we have. So as the years went on, the tools, the collected was improved and we were fortunate to be part of the improvement of the tool itself. So based on the improvements, we were able to do some of the assessments like the forest and land use assessment, which you will see we have published a, we did an assessment for 15 year period from 2000 to 2015. So this was only launched in 2019. Currently, we are updating that information from 2016 to 2019. So part of this updating of this information is to update our forest reference level, the final update report and the national determined contribution, as well as we did submit a red plus technical annex in our, the last submission of the NDC, as well as part of the part of this work we were able to develop the national red plus strategy. So you will see at the bottom of the screen where we have this, it's a 10 year, covers a 10 year period from 2017 to 2027. So within the period it highlights some activities that we're supposed to do for the under the red plus strategy. As well as I mentioned we're currently updating the information. So based on the updates we're able to go into submit another a second frail, the BUR, as well as the NDC and the BTR as well. So this is just a brief background of in terms of using the open forest tool. So much of this work that we've been doing has been just basically using collect that. So collect that has been the foundation in terms of especially the updating of the forest and then using information here in PNG. Okay, like the colleague in Ghana mentioned about the National Forest Monitoring System. So for as part of the our National Forest Inventory, we use the collect it to stratify the type and the different forest strata that we have. So we had a double sampling approach where we have the use of the remote sensing and the collect earth and then doing the random nice selection of the plots itself or the forest plots. So basically you can see that we have the the NFI cluster design. So basically we have about four plots within a cluster. So in various about 300 meters apart a different direction. And then the plot design itself we have about the measurement of different variables at various radius. And we also developed the field manual. So we were looking at the upper plants that's basically the trees, the lower plants, and then we captured information on the birds and the insects and also looking at the soil information. So you can see there's some of my colleagues out in the field collecting doing some assessments. So we have the someone doing the measuring of the tree diameter and then we also do the the collection of the lower plants by collecting samples between the given radius and then the collection of the insects and recording of the birds and so. So so far in our current progress in in this work. For this work we we set to do about 1000 clusters, which is basically around for 4000 plots. At the moment we only have done 42 classes it's roughly around 166 plots. So we still have a really long way to go but we hope to complete this as this is this would be our first National Forest Inventory, multi-purpose National Forest Inventory, apart from the convention, apart from the inventories that we do for our logging operations. This one here is as I stated about the open forest tools. So far, we initially when we got into using the tools we were mostly exposed on the collect earth. And then gradually we were exposed to using the collect, collect mobile, and just recently we started using the collect earth online as part of the mangrove assessment. So in the next couple of slides I'll be just touching basically on the collect earth in terms of how it's been useful in terms of doing the forest monitoring and then assessing the changes within the forest and the land use. Okay this is just an example of using the collect earth so you can actually customize the collect earth depending on your country's circumstances. So for our case, because we have about 13 forest types, so we have about 12 that is in the natural forest and then we cover the forest plantation. So in this example here is basically showing in a natural environment of one of the forest types that we have. So this one is basically looking at the logging activity that's happening in this particular plot here. So basically the idea of using this is to actually detect when the actual disturbance occurs in this plot here. So you will have like, we're using the Google Earth engine, which has the lands at seven and eight. And then just recently you have the Sentinel which shows the current status of the forest or the land use in general. So we can see that in 2000 you still have the forest that's still intact and then the detection of logging roads was detected in 2012. So from this we are able to determine the type or when the disturbance actually occurred in that forest area. So this is also useful because this will also help us to determine if the operation is actually within the confined or permitted boundary or concession where the operation is occurring. If it is outside then we can inform our colleagues on the on the project sites that are monitoring these project areas to ask them to check. So this is one way to ensure that whatever is what the logging operation is happening out there is within the permitted boundaries of the concession area. Okay, this is for the land use monitoring. So this example is basically showing how you can actually determine from forest land converted to our cropland. So you have here as previously you have the the Landsat images of Landsat seven and eight and then Sentinel. So as shown previously we have the intact forest also way back in 2000 is still a forest and then we detected a full conversion from forest to cropland in 2012. So this also helps us to determine the type of activity for so for this one here, we will notice that this is a pattern of an oil palm plantation. So this makes us this makes it easy to determine the activity that's occurring in this particular area. So this also this information does not only help the forestry sector but this can also help our the other sectors like agriculture and our lands. The other departments as well. So using this tool we're able to to update the information that we have on forest and other land use. Okay, in terms of lessons land, we since using the collect it, we see that it is it has been beneficial for PNG, especially in updating the forest and land use information. As you stated, from the beginning you can customize these and depending on your country's specific circumstances. So, and also it has, it has built some understanding with the, with the dynamics of changing of forest and other land use changes as well. So this is a capacity building since using these two way back in 2013 and since the evolution or the changing or the to the version of the open forest collect collect that we have also evolved and we appreciate that we were given the opportunity to be part of these processes as well. Also, as part of this, we are able to have access to the latest satellite imagery. So we understand that having access to that is it costs money. So it's having a just a satellite image itself. So we can be able to able to have access to it. So we're grateful that this was provided as part of the integration to the tool itself. In terms of future improvements. I did not mention anything on challenges, but I guess one of the challenges here is internet connectivity. So for you to have a good internet connection, then, then you can be able to use some of these tools because without internet connection. It becomes a bit difficult. So in PNG and I guess in some other countries, you will notice that internet is, it costs a lot of money, it's not. It's something that it's it would be an ongoing issue, but we hope that in future or something can be put in place where we can have in terms of future improvements. I just put two here because just the ability to develop and design these various tools for the different tools that we are using and mostly the documentation of the of how actually developing and designing this. So for us, we would like the capacity to be built and then for us to be able to do it ourselves. Because at the end, this is something that we would want to have it like on a sustainable basis. So, from this, I guess, we're very grateful that we were given the opportunity to use this and I guess we will still continue to use this. And yeah, so thank you to FAO and everyone for making this possible. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth for sharing your presentation and your experience there on developing the National Forest monitoring system. That was that was really interesting. And now that's actually it for all our presentations. We're going to now move on to the question and answer session. So, don't hesitate to write your questions for our speakers, Lauri, Rocío, Thomas or Elizabeth in the question and answer box. And if you can write their name before your question that will really help us as well to identify who should respond. That will be great. And yeah, just another reminder to keep the questions in the Q&A box rather than the chat but I think I think most of you are doing that anyway so that's great. So, yeah, my first question is to Thomas. So, Thomas, in 2019, Ghana signed an emissions reductions payment agreement and ERPA with the Forest Carbon Partnership facility. So how does Ghana's National Forest monitoring system and this work on the data transparency that you highlighted in your presentation contribute to this ERPA. Thank you very much. I'm ready for the question. So the ERPA has four monitoring periods. The first is 2019. The second is 2020-2021. The third is 2022-2023 and the fourth is 2024. Basically, we are supposed to generate our each report indicates the emission reductions that can be sold under the ERPA as you rightly pointed out and is through the National Forest monitoring system that we are able to generate the emission reduction so-called and that is shared with the carbon fund under the ERPA. So through this process, Ghana has now been able to produce our first monitoring report for 2019 indicating the emission reductions, the first emission reductions under the ERPA. So basically, that's the key thing to all of this. That's the National Forest monitoring system. The system that we put in place gives guidance on how we can produce the emission reductions and subsequently use it in the reports, the monitoring reports that is submitted to the carbon fund. And that's the first. It's been online. And all can check how some of these reports have been generated and how particular, but I must add that in the grant based and all of these have been combined to produce the monitoring report under the ERPA. So that's the key thing that the NFMS has done to using all the institutional arrangements and all that and that the NFMS to help us produce a very fresh report under the ERPA, which is yet to be verified. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot there, Thomas. My next question then is to Lauri. Lauri, in your opinion, what are the top three benefits of using tools like open forest? Thanks, thanks Emily. So, first, open forest offers freely available tools for all phases of forest monitoring. And there are tools from the field data collection to the efficient to management and processing of data. And then you want to use remote sensing data, there are efficient tools for assessment and monitoring. That was quite already three answers, but I continue. So secondly, open forest are easily accessible, well maintained and constantly further developed. And thirdly, you ask about the scale. So whether it is a local subnational or national level that is not an issue, because these applications are suitable for land and forest monitoring at all scales. Thanks a lot, Lauri. And I see you've been active as well in the question and answer box to all the questions that are in there for you as well. So thanks for that. My next question then would be to Elizabeth. So, I think Papua New Guinea is quite famous for the very high biodiversity that it has and also the very large number of islands which are wonderful but I think those are also things that might pose challenges that might prove challenging to forest monitoring how to monitor all the different species that are there and how to monitor across all the different hundreds of different islands that the country has. So the question then is, how, then Elizabeth words it open forest tools adapted to PNG is unique context in order to respond to these challenges. Thank you Emily for the question. Yes, like other countries and biodiversity would be a challenge for any country. So with the open forest tool, we were able to capture the have a list of the species the plant species. So in PNG we have roughly about 20,000 plant species. With this list we were able to upload it into the collect mobile. So this was used in the when we were conducting our inventory surveys. So this useful was this list was useful in terms of the getting it from species to a general to species or even just the species level a general level. So, I guess this tool has been very useful. Yes. So, yes, this also helps with the since it's a, it's a huge list that not everyone can memorize so with this list, we're able to check and confirm that the spelling and all that those particular species is the correct one. So, and also we're able to make comments if we find out that there is a new species or there's something that we need to highlight. We can also capture that information as well. Yep. Thanks. Thanks a lot Elizabeth. Okay, another question to to Lowry. Maybe it's also related some of the questions in the chat is, what would you say Lowry to somebody that is concerned that they don't have the computing skills the skills to use for example our studio. What would you say to somebody who is worried about that when using open for us. So open for us tools do not require computing skills at all. But some of them really do. So for example, they for us inventory data processing is always require some sort of expertise so that they needs to be some local expert who is tailoring the calculation chain for the particular inventory case for example, but the rest of the users, they do this, this part they simply use they click the button and they use the application. So, in order to facilitate this learning processes, we have prepared a user manual that is available under arena tools website in open for us to work, and we are currently preparing video tutorials. And also we have an active open for the support forum in internet so that you can ask questions and the experts we or other experts around the world will answer to your questions. Thanks over to you. I'm just looking in the chat and if you'd like to I can ask you a question, and you can respond vocally I see that you're typing in there as well which is great, but I see two questions that are asking about the differences between arena and collect Earth mobile. Do you want to respond. Yeah, actually, there are collect mobile and collect Earth they are different tools so but the difference between arena and collect Earth is that arena is not handling remote sensing data. As collect earth is doing, which is using a sampling point sampling approach using remote sensing data, but if the question is about collect mobile, then we, I must tell that we are implementing in next two weeks, so that we can import collect mobile data into arena. So, and we can use collect open for us collect data already know. Thank you. Great, thank you. I'll leave you to respond as well to the questions I see that you're responding to in the chat, and I will ask a question to receive. So, back at the start of the of this webinar you were telling us about the your project CB IT forest, and a question would be, what is coming next what is the plans for the next months for the project. Thank you very much Emily for the for the question and I think I can have like two main things. I would say three maybe upcoming the third edition of the massive open online course open to all interest to learn more how forest, particular how in systems contribute to the climate action. It's starting on the 20th of September and last for three weeks. I encourage the participants to check our web page and register by the end of the month will have everything ready. Of course, I mentioned already doing my presentation. By the end of the year will also have the Russian and the Arabic version of the learning course and we will be launching those also through webinars I doc webinars also in Russian Arabic. And finally, I think, from the series of webinars we had, we will have a final one in 2021 on the 17th of November, where an online national forest inventory models will be launched and available to all so don't miss it and follow us. Thank you, Emily back to you. Thanks a lot Rocio. Great. I'm looking in the Q amp a box and I see that we've gotten through about two thirds of the of the questions in there so since we're almost near the end of the, almost near the end of the time allocated for the webinars you also have our closing remarks I think I will, I will move on and close the q amp a session here if that's okay. Thank you to all of our presenters today, Elizabeth Thomas, Lauri and also to receive on Fabio the introductory remarks, and thanks especially to all of you all 223 of you, I see, who have participated today. And thanks for all your engagement in the question and answer box, we will respond to all questions in a follow up the ones that are remaining, and we'll share the entire transcript of the q amp a box with you all, so that you can refer to those. And we will also be sharing of course the recording as soon as we can on the e learning Academy website, which I think the link has. Yeah, it's been shared in the chat. And with that, I would like to hand over to Julian Fox for some concluding remarks, Julian is team leader of national forest monitoring in the forestry division of food and agriculture organization, the United Nations, thank you Julian for being here with us today, over to you. Thanks so much Emily, I mean FAO is really honored to accompany countries and forest stakeholders on their journey toward more transparent forest data. It's essential for the Paris agreement through capacity development, and also through the provision of open source tools and platforms FAO is open forest is 10 years old and these tools and platforms are really mature. And I've been used by over 30,000 people in just about all the countries of the world which we're really, really proud of. However, we continue to innovate and improve them, and it's great to launch arena today with support from you and read. Open forest arena raises eases the management of field data, as it provides users with the ability to fully customize the inventory structure variables and data checks. And the platform combines the main features of two open forest tools into a platform open forest collect open forest calc into the arena platform. I mean national forest inventory data is fundamental ground measurement, and it's really expensive to collect. Hence, having accessible solutions such as arena is key to enable countries and stakeholders to store analyze and report their first data. And it's great to have to read plus pioneers with us today, PNG and Ghana, and huge thanks to Thomas and Elizabeth for the great presentations. PNG institutionalized the national forest monitoring system based on open forest tools and platforms which we're really proud of, and has also conducted a national forest inventory has described by Elizabeth. Ghana is in the process of finalizing its NFMS to support data provision for national needs as well as national and subnational reporting to the UNFCCC and the World Bank's carbon fund, as described by Thomas. I mean the national forest monitoring systems of BNG and Ghana are excellent examples of multipurpose systems supporting both data provision for reporting and supporting national needs for decision making and land management. And has helped both countries drive down deforestation and forest degradation. BNG reported 9 million tons of CO2 emission reductions to the UNFCCC. And Ghana is currently assessing emission reductions for the World Bank's carbon fund thanks to the national forest monitoring systems. I'd very like briefly like to highlight four elements of these NFMS which I think other countries can learn from. They provide transparent reliable and credible data that key data provision function for international reporting for MRV, other reporting needs and now transition into the enhanced transparency framework of the Paris Agreement. They did this by developing protocols methodologies and tools to standardize and ensure the quality, comparability and compatibility of the information produced. The data accessible to both national and international stakeholders through national web portals. This is essential particularly for national stakeholders, as well as the international community who follow the country's progress. The development of both NFMS has been highly participatory inclusive inclusive a range of stakeholders, and also producing relevant data for multiple needs, having key functions to provide data for forest and land management with that sectoral integration which is key. Another key feature that I noted is that the roles and responsibilities for the NFMS have been established and institutionalized which ensures sustainability. This is really important, although there are always challenges with continuity of funding when when systems are institutionalized in official government structures, they have a much better chance of being sustainable. So in summary, as I said we're really honored to have supported PNG and Ghana, and in other countries on continuous improvement of their NFMS. And we're really pleased to share these examples and case studies with you all today. We hope this can trigger further south south and triangular cooperation and knowledge exchanges between PNG Ghana and many other countries. I mean my closing comment is that we believe that higher levels of transparency create mutual trust in national and global climate and forest positive actions, and they facilitate high levels of ambition. I mean, our shared vision is that transparent, reliable, relevant, accessible and sustainable national forest monitoring systems can really support climate action on the ground as we've seen here today in Ghana and PNG. And continuous improvement of forest data collection and management can support high levels of country ownership, which leads to high levels of ambition, which is so desperately needed at this critical moment for for mankind and woman kind. Thank you very much for your valuable time have a fantastic day. I think at the moment I pass over to Fabio to close this great webinar. Thank you everybody. Excellent. Thank you very much Julian, and also thank you Emily for your moderation. Thank you to all the speakers of today for the presentations. As some of you asked, and as well, I wrote a read in the chat box, the recording of today's webinar and the Q&A, the presentation, everything will be made available at the link that I have already shared. You will also receive an email. All attendees will receive an email with all this information so it will be with you also in your mailbox. In the previous screen we also shared a list of all the related courses that are available free of charge through the file in Learning Academy. So, again, I just invite you all to have a look at the course offering all the links have been pasted also here in the chat box but they will be copied in the webpage where we'll all the learning material so everything will be with you. So, I just take this opportunity to thank again all the presenters, moderator, our partners, UNS Capagrinium, Future Feud Institute, and of course all of you, our participants. Thank you all very much for attending this session, and we look forward to having you again in our next webinars. Thanks again. Have a good continuation of your day. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye. Thanks everybody.