Mapping Together: A Guide to Monitoring Forest and Landscape Restoration Using Collect Earth Mapathons

The document introduces 'Mapping Together', a guide for using the open-source tool Collect Earth to track biophysical restoration goals. It details a process involving local stakeholders to monitor land use, tree cover, and spatial patterns. The guide provides four case studies from El Salvador, Ethiopia, India, and Rwanda to demonstrate how governments identify restoration opportunities and track progress toward forest cover targets, and outlines an 8-step methodology for implementing mapathons.

• Collect Earth mapathons allow stakeholders to track specific biophysical indicators, including tree count, tree spatial patterns, and changes in land use or land cover, by integrating high-resolution satellite imagery with local expertise to improve data accuracy.
• In El Salvador's Cerron Grande watershed, a mapathon identified restoration opportunities by revealing that most croplands had 0% tree cover, while grasslands had 10% and forests had 90%.
• In Ethiopia's Sodo Guragie Woreda, data collected for 2010 and 2015 showed that forest cover increased from 7.5% to 8.1%, which indicated a positive trend but remained below the target of 19% forest cover set by the national Climate Resilient Green Economy strategy.
• In Rwanda's Gatsibo District, a mapathon found that tree cover across sectors ranged from 12% to 22%, falling short of a 30% target; additionally, land cover changes between 2006 and 2014 showed a net loss of forest, wetland, grasslands, and shrublands, with a net gain in settlements and cropland.
• In India's Sidhi District, the mapathon identified areas where tree cover was less than 40% to highlight opportunities for increasing on-farm tree cover.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Mapping Together: A Guide to Monitoring Forest and Landscape Restoration Using Collect Earth Mapathons. https://www.wri.org/research/mapping-together-guide-monitoring-forest-and-landscape-restoration-using-collect-earth

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Mapping Together: A Guide to Monitoring Forest and Landscape Restoration Using Collect Earth Mapathons. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/mapping-together-guide-monitoring-forest-and-landscape-restoration-using-collect-earth.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Mapping Together: A Guide to Monitoring Forest and Landscape Restoration Using Collect Earth Mapathons |url=https://www.wri.org/research/mapping-together-guide-monitoring-forest-and-landscape-restoration-using-collect-earth |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendmapping, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Mapping Together: A Guide to Monitoring Forest and Landscape Restoration Using Collect Earth Mapathons}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/mapping-together-guide-monitoring-forest-and-landscape-restoration-using-collect-earth}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }