About Us – Open Foris

Over 250,000 individual users from more than 196 countries benefit from FAO’s Open Foris initiative to measure, monitor, and report on forestry progress, take science-based actions, and accelerate forest pathways.

Open Foris brings together communities, researchers, and practitioners to make forest and land monitoring accessible, transparent, and collaborative.

15 years work on open-source technical solutions

Digital innovation has transformed how we monitor the world’s forests.

250000

Users

> 13,000 people trained in using the platforms

196

Countries and territories

Helps countries measure, monitor and report on forestry progress, take science-based actions, and accelerate forest pathways

91%

UNFCCC FREL

Over 14 billion tCO2 of forest emission reductions or enhancements have been reported to UNFCCC.

+25

Developers

A multidisciplinary group of experts developing free, open-source solutions from FAO and in collaboration with other entities like Google, SIG, etc

2009Geospatial Toolkit assembled
2010Open Foris Collect
20111st concept note on Open Foris Initiative
The repository was already stated.
Planned components: Open Foris Calc, Open Foris Collect, Open Foris Species Editor, Open Foris Geospatial Toolkit, Design Tool for Inventory Modeling.
20121st release of Collect Survey Designer
Graphical user interface to design surveys.
2012Open Foris Calc
2012First land cover assessment with "Google Earth Tool"
Predecessor of Collect Earth, under the ILUA-II project in Zambia (20 June - 27 July)
2013Collect Earth - 1st Training in Papua New Guinea
2013Collect mobile
20141st Open Foris Website
2015SEPAL
2016Open Foris Collect tutorials on YouTube
2017Open Foris Earth Map
2017Open Foris Collect Earth Online
2021Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM)
2022Open Foris Arena
2023Open Foris Arena Mobile
2024Open Foris Ground
2024Open Foris Whisp
2024FAO-Google MoU
2025New Open Foris website

Open Foris Portfolio

Global Impact
Stories

Gambia’s National Forest Inventory goes digital and more precise with Open Foris solutions

The Gambia is transforming how it monitors and manages its forest, leaving behind paper-based data collection and embracing digital solutions to map, measure, and manage its forests with greater accuracy and efficiency. Led by the Gambia's Department of Forestry and supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the country is preparing for the next National Forest Inventory (NFI) – a key effort to track forest resources and guide decision-making. [read more →]

Cali, Colombia: New FAO forest monitoring solution supports Indigenous Peoples and smallholders

For Forest and Water Day, FAO launched a new Digital Public Good, Open Foris Whisp, which will help Indigenous Peoples and smallholder farmers produce forest monitoring information and support compliance with deforestation regulations. The open-source solution provides insights on different datasets from satellite-derived forest, land-use and tree-cover maps, ... [read more →]

Mexico strengthens communities' involvement in forest monitoring with Open Foris Arena

Mexico is reinforcing its forest monitoring capacities – a vital step for the nearly 12 million people, including 3.6 million Indigenous Peoples, who depend on forests for their livelihoods. In August 2024, FAO provided a dedicated training on Open Foris Arena, FAO’s open-source platform for field data collection and analysis and funded under the “AIM4Forests: Accelerating Innovative Monitoring for Forests” [read more →]