National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Forest Guardian: Saving Mexico's Forests Using EO, Coding, and a Pinch of Legal Insights

About the Talk Michoacán, located in the heart of Mexico, has been a leading agricultural powerhouse for over a decade and ranks among the top five forestry states in the country. Its diverse climates bolster its agricultural and forestry might. Remarkably, Michoacán produces 90% of the avocados consumed in the United States. Unfortunately, avocados thrive in andosol–a forest soil–leading to increased illegal deforestation for avocado orchard establishment. Illegal cultivation of avocado has caused significant economic, social, and environmental impacts in Mexico. The availability of high-resolution satellite instruments has allowed for improved monitoring of forest cover loss and for development of an alert system used to verify illegal activity. However, hundreds of thousands of alerts are received across the major avocado–producing municipalities making it hard to prioritize action. Forest Guardian ("Guardian Forestal" in Spanish), a civil society led initiative, is a system that analyzes forest cover change alerts. It uses an integrated system of satellite sensors, including Sentinel 1, 2a, 2b and Landsat 8/9 combined with high resolution base maps from Norway's International Climate and Forests Initiative, to help prioritize alerts and generate automatic complaints to judicial authorities in the state of Michoacán. Most importantly, it minimizes the human risk associated with personally reporting these illegal activities, as the system undertakes this task. This civil society initiative was engaged during last year's International Colloquium on Space and Sustainability, an event organized by Precisión Agrícola in collaboration with NASA in Guadalajara, Mexico. During this presentation, lessons learned from this initiative as well as further data gaps and needs will be discussed.

About the Speaker Heriberto Padilla Ibarra holds a degree in Business Creation and Development from Tec de Monterrey and is the founder of the technology company "Innmortal" since 2011. He is the author of a patent in data security and has a keen interest in Earth observation. Driven by the belief that major challenges necessitate significant technological solutions, Heriberto has immersed himself in the fields of technological development, Earth observation, and data science, particularly in relation to agriculture and forestry resources.

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