KYOTO-INV is a project aimed to build nation-wide EO based services for supporting the actors involved in the reporting on land-use change and forestry activities under the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The project is executed in the framework of the European Space Agency`s (ESA) Data User Element (DUE) to favour the establishment of a long-term relationship between the User communities and Earth Observation.

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in force since 16 February 2005, commits its Parties to limit net emissions of six major greenhouse gases during the period 2008-2012, with respect to a reference year (mostly 1990). As a result, there is a need at the national level, for services that can provide nation-wide monitoring of ARD and other land-use-change activities and reliable estimates of the resulting changes in the carbon stock.

The objective of KYOTO INV project is to define and implement a nation-wide service of benefit to actors involved in the reporting for the Kyoto Protocol. It will also include provision of monitoring with respect to Afforestation Reforestation and Deforestation (ARD) activities, or more generally to land-use change activities.

To this extent, more than 200.000 Km2 will be covered during the project over specific areas of Finland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands and for three different dates. The processing years are 1990 (reference year), 1997 (1984 for NL) and 2002.

The Service realized for Spain

The Service realized for Spain has been led by Planetek Italia. Institutional user of the Service is Ministerio de Medio Ambiente (MMA) Ministerio de Medio Ambiente (MMA) covering the most part of responsibilities and competences in the field of water, air, land, remains, woods and nature preservation. Products validation and definition of a specific Service has been made with the support of two Spanish organizations: CEAM, Centro de Estudios Ambientales, and INIA, Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria.

Spanish Products and Services Realized

Starting from Kyoto Protocol guidelines, a set of EO-based products has been defined for each country taking into account the different nation-specific requirements.

• The defined service products are:
• Land Use Map
• Forest Map
• Land Use Change (ARD) Map

Land Use Map, Forest Map and Land Use Change maps on three different years (1990, 1997, 2002) are produced for 38.000 Km2, spread on the following Spanish provinces:

• Lleida (Catalunya): 12.172 Km2
• Girona (Catalunya) : 5.909 Km2
• Caceres (Extremadura): 19.868 Km2

The interest and the encouraging efforts made by the users during Kyoto-Inventory project led to the operative service for the GMES Forest monitoring project, started in October 2005, in which Planetek Italia is involved providing the service on different Spanish provinces.