May 8-10, 2013, a progress exchange workshop of the APFNet-funded project titled Forest Cover and Carbon Mapping in the Greater Mekong Subregion and Malaysia was successfully held in Kunming, China, joined by 30 project partners and stakeholders from all the participating economies, as the fourth gathering under project plan to ensure effective communication and coordination among project teams.

The workshop was organized and moderated by Institute of Forest Resource and Information Technique, Chinese Academy of Forestry as the executing and coordinating agency. Overall project progress and performance in each economy were reported in detail, including the methods improvement of forest aboveground biomass estimation, field data collection for the test sites and forest type classification. Challenges and issues concerning the forest type classification and field survey encountered during project implementation were broadly discussed for solution. A special session for knowledge sharing concerning the latest research on global land cover mapping and forest height and aboveground biomass estimation in China and NASA/University of Maryland were introduced.

Since the project team last met in Thailand for the project mid-term evaluation at the end of 2012, project progress was updated with such problems as delay in the field inventory and inconsistence of forest cover classification system among participating economies (which were also the finding from the evaluation results). In addition, uncertainty of participation of Cambodia and Myanmar in the project was also a concern in terms of project schedule and achievement of expected outputs.

In view of this, annual work plan for the second project year was adjusted, and efforts were made, including visits to Myanmar for official participation and technical support and an extension of 6 months for project implementation. Up to now, the method of forest aboveground estimation has been further improved and tested by linking with different data source such as Continuous Forest Inventory (CFI) and National Forest Inventory (NFI), combined with remote sensing data (ICESat GLAS and optical remote sensing data). Field inventory and forest classification in the test site in Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Yunnan and Guangxi provinces of China have achieved remarkable progress. Those preliminary results on the forest classification map, field survey data as well as their accuracy validation have been shared and discussed. The official involvement of Cambodia and Myanmar make the project more efficiently move toward its set goal.

The workshop reached a consensus on the key indicators and outputs be achieved and shared at next progress exchanging workshop November, 2013, including the forest cover map in each economy in 2005 and 2010 and field survey data for biomass estimation and forest distribution maps evaluation.