Search

During December 2020, a crowdsourcing campaign to understand what has been driving tropical forest loss during the past decade was undertaken. For 2 weeks, 58 participants from several countries reviewed almost 115 K unique locations in the tropics, identifying drivers of forest loss (derived from the Global Forest Watch map) between 2008 and 2019. Previous studies have produced global maps of drivers of forest loss, but the current campaign increased the resolution and the sample size across the tropics to provide a more accurate mapping of crucial factors leading to forest loss. The data were collected using the Geo-Wiki platform (www.geo-wiki.org) where the participants were asked to select the predominant and secondary forest loss drivers amongst a list of potential factors indicating evidence of visible human impact such as roads, trails, or buildings. The data described here are openly available and can be employed to produce updated maps of tropical drivers of forest loss, which in turn can be used to support policy makers in their decision-making and inform the public.

Several global high-resolution built-up surface products have emerged over the last five years, taking full advantage of open sources of satellite data such as Landsat and Sentinel. However, these data sets require validation that is independent of the producers of these products. To fill this gap, we designed a validation sample set of 50 K locations using a stratified sampling approach independent of any existing global built-up surface products. We launched a crowdsourcing campaign using Geo-Wiki (https://www.geo-wiki.org/) to visually interpret this sample set for built-up surfaces using very high-resolution satellite images as a source of reference data for labelling the samples, with a minimum of five validations per sample location. Data were collected for 10 m sub-pixels in an 80 × 80 m grid to allow for geo-registration errors as well as the application of different validation modes including exact pixel matching to majority or percentage agreement. The data set presented in this paper is suitable for the validation and inter-comparison of multiple products of built-up areas.

Spatially explicit information on forest management at a global scale is critical for understanding the status of forests, for planning sustainable forest management and restoration, and conservation activities. Here, we produce the first reference data set and a prototype of a globally consistent forest management map with high spatial detail on the most prevalent forest management classes such as intact forests, managed forests with natural regeneration, planted forests, plantation forest (rotation up to 15 years), oil palm plantations, and agroforestry. We developed the reference dataset of 226 K unique locations through a series of expert and crowdsourcing campaigns using Geo-Wiki (https://www.geo-wiki.org/). We then combined the reference samples with time series from PROBA-V satellite imagery to create a global wall-to-wall map of forest management at a 100 m resolution for the year 2015, with forest management class accuracies ranging from 58% to 80%. The reference data set and the map present the status of forest ecosystems and can be used for investigating the value of forests for species, ecosystems and their services.

This collection contains data that were collected during a crowdsourcing campaign using Geo-Wiki (https://www.geo-wiki.org/). The campaign involved visual interpretation of a sample that is designed for validating any existing global built-up surface product. A zipped shapefile (ValidationGrids.zip) contains the random stratified sample of 50K locations, which consist of 80x80m grids further sub-divided into 10m cells so there are 64 cells per grid. These locations were provided to the crowd, who used very high-resolution satellite images to label the grids as built-up (i.e., containing a building), non-built-up or unsure. The file (Geo-WikiBuilt-upCentroidsAll.csv) contains the data collected in the campaign summarized by the centroid (or central point of each 80m grid location). The data collected for all 64 cells per grid can be found in Geo-WikiBuilt-upCellsAll.csv. The Geo-Wiki campaign uses visually interpreted grid locations called control points as part of the scoring mechanism of Geo-Wiki for quality control. These control points are provided by centroid (Geo-WikiBuilt-upCentroidsControls.csv) and for all cells in the 80m grid (Geo-WikiBuilt-upCellsControls.csv). Finally, the file Strata.csv contains the mapping between the grid location and the sampling stratum used in the design of the sample.

The data set is the result of the Drivers of Tropical Forest Loss crowdsourcing campaign. The campaign took place in December 2020. A total of 58 participants contributed validations of almost 120k locations worldwide. The locations were selected randomly from the Global Forest Watch tree loss layer (Hansen et al 2013), version 1.7. At each location the participants were asked to look at satellite imagery time series using a customized Geo-Wiki user interface and identify drivers of tropical forest loss during the years 2008 to 2019 following 3 steps: Step 1) Select the predominant driver of forest loss visible on a 1 km square (delimited by a blue bounding box); Step 2) Select any additional driver(s) of forest loss and; Step 3) Select if any roads, trails or buildings were visible in the 1 km bounding box. The Geo-Wiki campaign aims, rules and prizes offered to the participants in return for their work can be seen here: https://application.geo-wiki.org/Application/modules/drivers_forest_change/drivers_forest_change.html . The record contains 3 files: One “.csv” file with all the data collected by the participants during the crowdsourcing campaign (1158021 records); a second “.csv” file with the controls prepared by the experts at IIASA, used for scoring the participants (2001 unique locations, 6157 records) and a ”.docx” file describing all variables included in the two other files. A data descriptor paper explaining the mechanics of the campaign and describing in detail how the data was generated will be made available soon.