World Resources Institute - Forest Atlases
Data category
- Environmental data
- Governance data
- Forest Monitoring
The data offers solutions for:
- Nature-based information: Land use
- Improved decision making and transparency
Who are the data users?
- Corporates
- Investors
- Government
- Civil society organizations; Journalists and everyday citizens
Brief description of the data offering
The Forest Atlases are online platforms that help countries better manage their forest resources by combining government data with the latest forest monitoring technology. The Forest Atlases were first created to help governments keep track of major land-use categories such as logging permits, mining concessions, protected areas, hunting zones or community lands. These platforms are now available for 10 countries, and combine country-specific information with datasets from other sources such as tree cover loss and gain data from Global Forest Watch. For selected countries, the Forest Atlases also include documents on legal rights or management status of land uses such as concession contracts or management plans. Please refer to our country-specific Forest Atlases for more information on the available data for each country.
Where and how do you source your data?
The Forest Atlases leverage much of the global data and technology available on GFW and Resource Watch while providing additional, country-specific datasets, and build national capacity to apply this information and improve forest management and land-use decision-making. Country-specific land-use data in the Forest Atlases represents official government datasets published by the relevant forest agency. Nationally relevant datasets may also be sourced from academic or research institutions and nationally recognized as accurate by relevant governments. Land-use change data, such as tree cover loss and weekly alerts, are produced by GFW’s partners, including the University of Maryland, Planet and World Resources Institute, amongst others. For more information on each dataset, please refer to the Open Data Portal section of each Forest Atlas.
What is the cost for your data offering?
No cost. Anyone can access and use the Forest Atlases for a range of purposes. Users can download the Forest Atlas data through the country-specific Open Data Portals. The Forest Atlases provide detailed metadata for each of their datasets and publications. If users reference a figure or number generated by the Forest Atlases, or data downloaded from an Atlas, they are requested to use the citation provided in the metadata.
To cite the website or initiative overall, please use: [country name] Forest Atlas. [Name of ministry partner]/World Resources Institute. Accessed on (date).[site link].