Forest cover and Change in Belize circa 1990-2000-2005

As part of a regional wide Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund Project, a forest cover change assessment was conducted utilizing a series of 28.5 m1 Landsat TM satellite images following a supervised classification of double stacked image composites. As it was not possible to locate cloud free images of the sample years, the closest possible temporal replacements were chosen. Even with these second best options, not all scenes were entirely cloud free. In total, 10 scenes were analyzed (some only partially). For this project, forest is defined as closed canopy, mature natural broadleaf forest and took particular care not to classify secondary growth that was part of an agricultural cycle of slash and burn, as “forest”. Also within this definition, pine stands were not classified as “forest” based on their light and open canopy. The study found a steady but very low level of deforestation of approximately 0.5% annually. This figure is substantially lower than found in earlier studies, none of which followed the same methodology.