MALAYSIA

The Forestry Department of Peninsular Malaysia is responsible for the development strategies and guidelines regarding forestry management and to co-ordinate activities of the State Forestry Departments.

The project aimed to demonstrate the benefits of radar applications for forest monitoring in order to assist the FD in reaching International Timber Trade Organisation (ITTO) standards by the year 2000. The project followed the EC funded GIS & Mapping Project which had developed a GIS-based forest mapping system for the Forestry Department in 1996.

Finally the project aimed also to stimulate the use of radar based land use monitoring and the development of related operational services in Malaysia. Dissemination was considered important to increase awareness of the potential of radar applications in forest monitoring. At that time, no ERS SAR images could be purchased in Malaysia. The Malaysian Centre for Remote Sensing (MACRES) is the government appointed provider of space borne data like SPOT and Landsat. For this reason, MACRES was considered an important partner to provide the project with feedback for the operational use of radar images in Malaysia.