Arena is a modern, cloud-based platform designed for comprehensive forest inventory and land monitoring. It allows users to fully customize inventory structures, variables, and validation rules, supporting multilingual data entry and management. Arena integrates the capabilities of legacy OpenForis tools (Collect and Calc) into a seamless online environment, enabling survey design, data collection, management, analysis, dissemination, and reporting. Its dynamic form designer, taxonomy management, and real-time collaborative features make it ideal for both national forest inventories and complex, multi-cycle surveys. Arena supports importing legacy Collect surveys, integrates with Google Earth Engine for high-resolution satellite data access, and offers advanced data cleansing and export functions. Data is securely stored in the cloud, facilitating collaboration and reducing the need for local IT infrastructure.
Usage Areas
National forest inventory and monitoring programs- Collaborative, multi-user survey projects
- International reporting for NFMS, FRELs/FRLs, REDD+
- Projects requiring secure, cloud-based data management and real-time collaboration
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Arena Mobile is a next-generation, cross-platform application (Android and iOS) for efficient field data collection. It is tightly integrated with Arena, allowing users to collect, validate, and synchronize data in real time or offline. Arena Mobile supports customizable data entry forms, georeferenced data collection, multimedia attachments (photos, audio), and complex validation rules. Its intuitive interface is designed for use in challenging field conditions, ensuring reliable data capture and seamless integration with cloud-based Arena projects. The mobile app is ideal for teams conducting large-scale inventories, restoration monitoring, or rapid assessments in remote areas.
Usage Areas
- Data collection in remote or low-connectivity environments
- Field teams conducting forest and land surveys
- Rapid data collection for ecosystem assessments
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Collect is a robust, flexible tool for designing and managing complex surveys for field-based inventories. It offers a user-friendly interface for survey design, supports multilingual forms, and allows for the definition of validation rules, code lists, and species lists. Collect supports both office and field data entry, with powerful data cleansing, export/import, and backup features. It is widely used for national forest inventories, REDD+ monitoring, and socio-economic surveys. Collect can operate as a standalone application or integrate with other OpenForis tools for seamless data workflows. Its cross-platform compatibility and support for multiple export formats (XML, CSV, relational databases) make it a cornerstone for data management in forestry projects.
Usage Areas
- Office-based survey design and data management
- National forest and land use surveys
- Data quality assurance and reporting for REDD+ and climate commitments
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Collect Earth is a desktop solution that enables users to assess land cover and land use change through high-resolution satellite imagery. It integrates with Google Earth, and Google Earth Engine, allowing for detailed visual interpretation and data collection on forest cover, deforestation, degradation, and restoration. Collect Earth is highly customizable, supporting sample-based surveys, multi-user collaboration, and integration with national and international reporting frameworks. It is widely used for REDD+ monitoring, forest reference level establishment, and validation of remote sensing products. The tool’s visual interface and ability to overlay multiple data sources make it invaluable for accurate, science-based land assessments.
Usage Areas
- Remote sensing-based land-use/land-cover monitoring
- Land-use/land-cove change detection and validation
- Support for climate and national reporting
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Collect Earth Online (CEO) is the next generation web-based platform for geospatial analyses that provides a free, open-source, intuitive interface for accessing and interpreting high-resolution satellite imagery through a variety of sources, including Planet and imagery through Google Earth Engine. Users can create questionnaires with varying levels of complexity to suit their needs and have collaborators collect data simultaneously. CEO can support a broad spectrum of applications including landscape change, land cover monitoring and deforestation studies. Researchers, practitioners, public servants, and other stakeholders of all technical levels can make use of CEO as a user-friendly tool to collect data on earth observations at scale.
Usage Areas
- Remote sensing-based forest and land cover monitoring
- Land use change detection and validation
- Support for REDD+ and national reporting
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Earth Map is a user-friendly, web-based tool for visualizing and analyzing global climate and environmental data. Developed in partnership with Google Earth Outreach, it allows users to access, visualize, and analyze a wide range of geospatial datasets, including climate variables, vegetation indices, and land cover data. Earth Map is designed for accessibility, requiring no specialized technical skills, and supports decision-making for land management, restoration, and climate adaptation. Its intuitive interface and powerful analytics make it suitable for both local communities and national agencies.
Usage Areas
- Rapid assessment of climate, vegetation, and land variables
- Visualization, analysis and data dissemination
- Support for evidence-based policy and project design
- On-the-fly statistics for e.g. temperature, precipitation, & land changes for chosen time period
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The FERM consists of a geospatial platform and a registry of restoration initiatives. It is the official monitoring platform for tracking global progress and disseminating good practices for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. It also supports countries in reporting areas under restoration for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Target 2. The FERM Registry provides a harmonized data collection mechanism to aggregate data from restoration platforms.
Usage Areas
- Restoration Monitoring
- Good practices of restoration initiatives
- Reporting Restoration Progress
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Ground is an open-source, map-first data collection web console co-developed by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Google that enables non-technical users to easily create surveys and collect georeferenced field data via an Android app. It supports offline data entry with automatic syncing and provides real-time visualization through a web dashboard, where data can be downloaded in CSV or GeoJSON formats. Ground is designed for non-technical users, making field data collection easy and accessible. It supports sustainability monitoring, restoration, and training data collection. For example, it empowers smallholders to track value chains and drive impact at scale.
Usage Areas
- Sustainable Commodity Production and Supply Chains
- Land Use and Land Cover Assessments
- Environmental Monitoring and Conservation
- Machine Learning Training Data Collection
- Community-Based Monitoring
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SEPAL is an open-source, cloud-based computing platform developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to enable efficient processing and analysis of satellite data for land and forest monitoring. Its primary purpose is to help countries, government agencies, researchers, NGOs, and academic institutions monitor land use, detect changes such as deforestation, and support restoration and climate action without needing advanced coding skills. SEPAL allows users to quickly access, analyze, and visualize high-resolution satellite imagery—enabling better policy decisions and improved reporting for international climate and sustainability goals. Key benefits include the ability to create custom maps, monitor land in near-real-time, and support robust, transparent land management strategies at local, national, and global scales
Usage Areas
- Forest and land monitoring
- Climate action
- Ecosystem restoration and reforestation planning
- Disaster risk management and fire monitoring
- Custom geospatial analysis and visualization
- Change detection and time-series analysis
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What is in that plot is an open-source solution which helps to produce relevant forest monitoring information and support compliance with deforestation-related regulations. Whisp is robust, transparent, and replicable, built on interoperable open standards. All code is open, publicly available, and can be inspected, reproduced, and adapted on GitHub.
Numerous publicly available Earth Observation maps provide data on forests, land use, and tree cover. However, these maps often differ because they use various definitions and classification systems. As a result, no single map can provide a complete picture of any specific area. To address this issue, the Forest Data Partnership (FDaP) and the AIM4Forests Programme advocate for the Convergence of Evidence approach.
Usage Areas
- Transparent Supply Chains
- Digital Public Infrastructure
- Supporting Deforestation Compliance