UK-Indonesia climate change partnership

05 February 2010, 9:59am

British satellite imaging company DMCii welcomes International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander's announcement that the UK has joined forces with the Indonesian government to tackle deforestation and prepare Indonesians for the impacts of climate change.

Managing Director Dave Hodgson commented, "We are in the unique position of having systems in place to measure deforestation in Indonesia and have seen first-hand the wide scale damage that forest clearing and peat fires produce. We welcome our government's commitment to support Indonesia and jointly tackle deforestation."

Britain is leading a programme of systematic, wide-area forest monitoring in Indonesia coordinated through the European Space Agency (ESA). DMCii is currently heading up a team that includes members of the University of Leicester and the World Resources Institute (WRI) to show how satellite imagery can be combined with other data and expert knowledge to provide more powerful tools to tackle deforestation.

One of the biggest contributors to deforestation in Indonesia is forest clearing to make way for oil palm plantations. DMCii employs a constellation of 5 satellites that provide consecutive images of the forest as it changes. This imaging system has proved especially successful at gathering cloud-free and smoke-free images in tropical forests because the satellites have the ability for daily revisit, thus ensuring DMCii provide customers with a higer quality coverage.

Indonesia has made an ambitious pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 41 per cent with the UK's support. Such targets may only be met and monitored by accurately and regularly monitoring forest cover in the region.

With its University of Leicester and WRI partners, DMCii is working to provide maps and statistics that are based upon irrefutable measurement of changes in forest cover in Indonesia. The high resolution and regular provision of new images also makes it possible to pinpoint areas of deforestation before it spreads. This up-to-date, accurate information can improve our understanding of the location, extent and causes of deforestation and help Indonesia to reverse deforestation as it builds its new low-carbon economy.

DMCii has experience coordinating challenging satellite imaging campaigns over the rainforests of the Amazon Basin and the Congo Basin and temperate forests in Siberia, Scandinavia, Europe and North America.

About DMC International Imaging Ltd
DMC International Imaging Ltd (DMCii) is a UK based supplier of remote sensing data products and services for international Earth Observation (EO) markets. DMCii supplies programmed and archived optical satellite imagery provided by the multi-satellite Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC). DMC data is now used in a wide variety of commercial and government applications including agriculture, forestry and environmental mapping.

In partnership with the British National Space Centre (BNSC) and the other DMC member nations (Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey and Spain), DMCii works with the International Charter: 'Space and Major Disasters' to provide free satellite imagery for humanitarian use in the event of major international disasters such as tsunami, hurricanes, fires and flooding.

DMCii was formed in October 2004 and is a subsidiary of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), the world leader in small satellite technology. SSTL designed and built the DMC with the support of the BNSC and in conjunction with the DMC member nations Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey and Spain.

DMCii

Geo: International