Access to high resolution data to support sustainable development activities, particularly for conservation and deforestation has often been limited by barriers of cost and licensing. Yet the benefit of higher resolution data provides opportunities for improved reporting, monitoring changes or high cadence updates not afforded by public sources alone.

This was one of the reasons the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment through NICFI funded the Global tropical forest program initiative to, for the first time ever, enable users to access high resolution data without these usual barriers. The program focuses on the purpose of reducing and reversing the loss of tropical forests and is designed to be as broad as possible to ensure it is useful for as many groups as possible.

This presentation will introduce the program, the datasets and the various open tools that can be used to explore the data through case studies and applications.