Good governance of the environment requires up-to-date and objective information on the status of natural ecosystems and trends of change. Satellite imagery can provide regularly updated information giving a synoptic view on vegetation dynamics and land cover changes over time.
The ENDELEO project aims at promoting good environmental governance of vulnerable ecosystems in Kenya, by facilitating access to updated remote sensing based information on the status of these natural ecosystems. A web-based monitoring tool, accessible through http://endeleo.vgt.vito.be, has been developed to allow easy exploration of the vegetation conditions. It consists of an image viewer, interactive graphs and the calculation of statistics. These sections are updated every ten days with new images. In addition, detailed patterns of change are analysed for a number of focus areas based on high resolution satellite images. A help section including a manual and background information on remote sensing is available.
As a result, the ENDELEO tool fulfils the increased demand from ecosystem managers, both government agencies and environmental NGO’s, for easy visualisation and analysis of remote sensing data to assess the extent of vegetation changes, to determine the drivers of change and to evaluate policy measures.
ENDELEO is a cooperation between Ghent University (Belgium), the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) (Belgium), the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the Kenyan government represented by the Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing (DRSRS), together with multiple stakeholders. The project is financed by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO).