Intact Forest Landscapes
An Intact Forest Landscape (IFL) is an unbroken expanse of natural ecosystems within the zone of current forest extent, showing no signs of significant human activity, and large enough that all native biodiversity, including viable populations of wide-ranging species, could be maintained.
The IFL concept and its technical definition were introduced to help create, implement, and monitor policies concerning the forest degradation at the regional-to-global levels. The essence of the IFL method is to use freely available medium spatial resolution satellite imagery to establish the boundaries of large undeveloped forest areas, so called Intact Forest Landscapes (IFL), and to use these boundaries as a baseline for forest degradation monitoring. Developed by a group of non-governmental environmental organizations (Greenpeace, World Resources Institute, and Transparent World), the IFL concept, mapping and monitoring algorithms have been used both in regional and global forest monitoring projects and in scientific research. The IFL method could be used for fast and cost-effective assessment and monitoring of forest degradation in the context of REDD+ initiative.
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