I am a research scientist with the Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy. Having first worked at the Institute for the International Vegetation Map (CNRS/University) in Toulouse, France, he later became a seconded national expert from the French Ministry of Agriculture and Forest to the JRC in Ispra. Having joined the JRC in 1992, I started research activities in the framework of the “TRopical Ecosystem Environment observations by Space” (TREES) project. I then coordinated the second phase of the TREES project (1997-2001) and carried out from 2002 to 2006 activities of forest cover monitoring in boreal Eurasia. I was leader of the TREES-3 project (2007-2012) which led to updated estimates of forest cover changes in Tropics. My current research interests include the development of Earth observation techniques for the monitoring of tropical and boreal Eurasia forest resources, and the assessment of implications of forest cover changes on the global carbon budget.
IGARSS 2001. Scanning the Present and Resolving the Future. Proceedings. IEEE 2001 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (Cat. No.01CH37217), 2001
[Proceedings] IGARSS '92 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 1992
Coarse resolution satellite data are increasingly used for monitoring the tropical forest cover a... more Coarse resolution satellite data are increasingly used for monitoring the tropical forest cover at regional to global scales. Given the nature of the data, new approaches have to be devised for classifying forest types. They rely mainly upon three types of discriminants: those based upon spectral constrasts, temporal changes and, to a lesser degree textural patterns. This paper examines the
Since time immemorial, humankind has changed landscapes in attempts to improve the amount, qualit... more Since time immemorial, humankind has changed landscapes in attempts to improve the amount, quality, and security of natural resources critical to its well being, such as food, freshwater, fiber, and medicinal products. Through the increased use of innovation, human populations have, slowly at first, and at increasingly rapid pace later on, increased its ability to derive resources from the environment, and expand its territory. Several authors have identified three different phases - the control of fire, domestication of biota, and fossil-fuel use - as being pivotal in enabling increased appropriation of natural resources (Goudsblom and De Vries 2004; Turner II and McCandless 2004).
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2000
The Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) radar mosaics, generated from L-band Japanese Earth Resourc... more The Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) radar mosaics, generated from L-band Japanese Earth Resources Satellite 1 imagery downsampled to 100-m pixel size, provide a two-season spatially continuous coverage of the humid tropical ecosystems of the world. This paper presents a novel classification approach suitable for regional-scale vegetation mapping using the GRFM datasets. The mapping system consists of: 1) an application-dependent
Abstract. At the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, a methodology has been d... more Abstract. At the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, a methodology has been developed to monitor the pan-tropical forest cover with remote sensing data for the years 1990-2000-2005 in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa on the basis of over ...
Abstract The TREES-3 project of the Joint Research Centre aims at assessing tropical forest cover... more Abstract The TREES-3 project of the Joint Research Centre aims at assessing tropical forest cover changes for the periods 19902000 and 20002010 using a sample-based approach. This paper refers to the 19902000 assessment. Extracts of Landsat satellite imagery (20 ...
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 28, 2005
Despite the importance of the world's humid tropical forests, our knowledge concerning their ... more Despite the importance of the world's humid tropical forests, our knowledge concerning their rates of change remains limited. Two recent programmes (FAO 2000 Forest Resources Assessment and TREES II), exploiting the global imaging capabilities of Earth observing satellites, have recently been completed to provide information on the dynamics of tropical forest cover. The results from these independent studies show a high degree of conformity and provide a good understanding of trends at the pan-tropical level. In 1990 there were some 1150 million ha of tropical rain forest with the area of the humid tropics deforested annually estimated at 5.8 million ha (approximately twice the size of Belgium). A further 2.3 million ha of humid forest is apparently degraded annually through fragmentation, logging and/or fires. In the sub-humid and dry tropics, annual deforestation of tropical moist deciduous and tropical dry forests comes to 2.2 and 0.7 million ha, respectively. Southeast Asia ...
ABSTRACT Abstract – Research groups at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) have been heavily involved... more ABSTRACT Abstract – Research groups at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) have been heavily involved in the development of methods for monitoring forest cover resources in a global perspective. A JRC project aims at estimating forest cover changes for the periods 1990-2000-2005 based on a systematic sample of medium ,resolution satellite imagery from pan- tropical to sub-regional levels. The project is carried out in a collaborative partnership with FAO by supporting the remote sensing survey of the FAO Forest Resources Assessment 2010 programme. Anoperational system is being developed for the processing and change assessment of multi-temporal (3 dates) 30-m resolution imagery over circa 4,000 sample sites over the tropics. The paper presents the objectives and the status of the project including the steps of data collection, processing chain and pilot study over test sites. The future steps required to develop a full operational system will also be presented. Keywords: Forestry, Change Detection, Sampling, Landsat. 1.,INTRODUCTION Tropical deforestation contributes approximately ,to 20 % of ,the world’s anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, mainly through CO2 emissions. Global net carbon flux resulting from land use changes during the 1990s, predominantly deforestation in the tropics, have been estimated by IPCC at 1.6 GtC yr,. However,
... The lessons learned from this first TREES project have led the Joint Research Centre to propo... more ... The lessons learned from this first TREES project have led the Joint Research Centre to propose a second phase called TREES II (1994-1998). This project will be geared to the development of a prototype operational tropical forest monitor-ing system. ...
A database of largely cloud-free (less than 2.5% of all sites have more than 5% cloud cover), geo... more A database of largely cloud-free (less than 2.5% of all sites have more than 5% cloud cover), geo-referenced 20 km× 20 km sample sites of 30 m resolution optical satellite imagery have been prepared for the 1990 and 2000 epochs. This spans the tropics with a systematic sample located at the degree confluence points of the geographic grid. The resulting 4016 sample pairs are to be used to measure changes in the area of forest cover between the two epochs. The primary data source was the National Aeronautics and Space ...
Global to regional datasets from coarse spatial resolution satellite sensors are increasingly bec... more Global to regional datasets from coarse spatial resolution satellite sensors are increasingly becoming available. Land cover and vegetation extent maps are among the terrestrial products derived from such data. Whilst they provide a previously unavailable synoptic view of global situations, accuracy assessment methodological issues are often ignored when creating these digital databases or producing statistics from such sources. This paper looks at how these issues are addressed in the framework of the Joint Research Centre's ...
... validation M. SGRENZAROLI*, GF DE GRANDI, H. EVA and F. ACHARD European Commission Joint Rese... more ... validation M. SGRENZAROLI*, GF DE GRANDI, H. EVA and F. ACHARD European Commission Joint Research Centre, Global Vegetation Monitoring UnitSpace, Applications InstituteTP440, 21020 Ispra, Varese, Italy Abstract. ...
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2000
The Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) radar mosaics, generated from L-band Japanese Earth Resourc... more The Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) radar mosaics, generated from L-band Japanese Earth Resources Satellite 1 imagery downsampled to 100-m pixel size, provide a two-season spatially continuous coverage of the humid tropical ecosystems of the world. This paper presents a novel classification approach suitable for regional-scale vegetation mapping using the GRFM datasets. The mapping system consists of: 1) an application-dependent
IGARSS 2001. Scanning the Present and Resolving the Future. Proceedings. IEEE 2001 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (Cat. No.01CH37217), 2001
[Proceedings] IGARSS '92 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 1992
Coarse resolution satellite data are increasingly used for monitoring the tropical forest cover a... more Coarse resolution satellite data are increasingly used for monitoring the tropical forest cover at regional to global scales. Given the nature of the data, new approaches have to be devised for classifying forest types. They rely mainly upon three types of discriminants: those based upon spectral constrasts, temporal changes and, to a lesser degree textural patterns. This paper examines the
Since time immemorial, humankind has changed landscapes in attempts to improve the amount, qualit... more Since time immemorial, humankind has changed landscapes in attempts to improve the amount, quality, and security of natural resources critical to its well being, such as food, freshwater, fiber, and medicinal products. Through the increased use of innovation, human populations have, slowly at first, and at increasingly rapid pace later on, increased its ability to derive resources from the environment, and expand its territory. Several authors have identified three different phases - the control of fire, domestication of biota, and fossil-fuel use - as being pivotal in enabling increased appropriation of natural resources (Goudsblom and De Vries 2004; Turner II and McCandless 2004).
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2000
The Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) radar mosaics, generated from L-band Japanese Earth Resourc... more The Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) radar mosaics, generated from L-band Japanese Earth Resources Satellite 1 imagery downsampled to 100-m pixel size, provide a two-season spatially continuous coverage of the humid tropical ecosystems of the world. This paper presents a novel classification approach suitable for regional-scale vegetation mapping using the GRFM datasets. The mapping system consists of: 1) an application-dependent
Abstract. At the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, a methodology has been d... more Abstract. At the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, a methodology has been developed to monitor the pan-tropical forest cover with remote sensing data for the years 1990-2000-2005 in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa on the basis of over ...
Abstract The TREES-3 project of the Joint Research Centre aims at assessing tropical forest cover... more Abstract The TREES-3 project of the Joint Research Centre aims at assessing tropical forest cover changes for the periods 19902000 and 20002010 using a sample-based approach. This paper refers to the 19902000 assessment. Extracts of Landsat satellite imagery (20 ...
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 28, 2005
Despite the importance of the world's humid tropical forests, our knowledge concerning their ... more Despite the importance of the world's humid tropical forests, our knowledge concerning their rates of change remains limited. Two recent programmes (FAO 2000 Forest Resources Assessment and TREES II), exploiting the global imaging capabilities of Earth observing satellites, have recently been completed to provide information on the dynamics of tropical forest cover. The results from these independent studies show a high degree of conformity and provide a good understanding of trends at the pan-tropical level. In 1990 there were some 1150 million ha of tropical rain forest with the area of the humid tropics deforested annually estimated at 5.8 million ha (approximately twice the size of Belgium). A further 2.3 million ha of humid forest is apparently degraded annually through fragmentation, logging and/or fires. In the sub-humid and dry tropics, annual deforestation of tropical moist deciduous and tropical dry forests comes to 2.2 and 0.7 million ha, respectively. Southeast Asia ...
ABSTRACT Abstract – Research groups at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) have been heavily involved... more ABSTRACT Abstract – Research groups at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) have been heavily involved in the development of methods for monitoring forest cover resources in a global perspective. A JRC project aims at estimating forest cover changes for the periods 1990-2000-2005 based on a systematic sample of medium ,resolution satellite imagery from pan- tropical to sub-regional levels. The project is carried out in a collaborative partnership with FAO by supporting the remote sensing survey of the FAO Forest Resources Assessment 2010 programme. Anoperational system is being developed for the processing and change assessment of multi-temporal (3 dates) 30-m resolution imagery over circa 4,000 sample sites over the tropics. The paper presents the objectives and the status of the project including the steps of data collection, processing chain and pilot study over test sites. The future steps required to develop a full operational system will also be presented. Keywords: Forestry, Change Detection, Sampling, Landsat. 1.,INTRODUCTION Tropical deforestation contributes approximately ,to 20 % of ,the world’s anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, mainly through CO2 emissions. Global net carbon flux resulting from land use changes during the 1990s, predominantly deforestation in the tropics, have been estimated by IPCC at 1.6 GtC yr,. However,
... The lessons learned from this first TREES project have led the Joint Research Centre to propo... more ... The lessons learned from this first TREES project have led the Joint Research Centre to propose a second phase called TREES II (1994-1998). This project will be geared to the development of a prototype operational tropical forest monitor-ing system. ...
A database of largely cloud-free (less than 2.5% of all sites have more than 5% cloud cover), geo... more A database of largely cloud-free (less than 2.5% of all sites have more than 5% cloud cover), geo-referenced 20 km× 20 km sample sites of 30 m resolution optical satellite imagery have been prepared for the 1990 and 2000 epochs. This spans the tropics with a systematic sample located at the degree confluence points of the geographic grid. The resulting 4016 sample pairs are to be used to measure changes in the area of forest cover between the two epochs. The primary data source was the National Aeronautics and Space ...
Global to regional datasets from coarse spatial resolution satellite sensors are increasingly bec... more Global to regional datasets from coarse spatial resolution satellite sensors are increasingly becoming available. Land cover and vegetation extent maps are among the terrestrial products derived from such data. Whilst they provide a previously unavailable synoptic view of global situations, accuracy assessment methodological issues are often ignored when creating these digital databases or producing statistics from such sources. This paper looks at how these issues are addressed in the framework of the Joint Research Centre's ...
... validation M. SGRENZAROLI*, GF DE GRANDI, H. EVA and F. ACHARD European Commission Joint Rese... more ... validation M. SGRENZAROLI*, GF DE GRANDI, H. EVA and F. ACHARD European Commission Joint Research Centre, Global Vegetation Monitoring UnitSpace, Applications InstituteTP440, 21020 Ispra, Varese, Italy Abstract. ...
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2000
The Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) radar mosaics, generated from L-band Japanese Earth Resourc... more The Global Rain Forest Mapping (GRFM) radar mosaics, generated from L-band Japanese Earth Resources Satellite 1 imagery downsampled to 100-m pixel size, provide a two-season spatially continuous coverage of the humid tropical ecosystems of the world. This paper presents a novel classification approach suitable for regional-scale vegetation mapping using the GRFM datasets. The mapping system consists of: 1) an application-dependent
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Papers by Frederic Achard