Session summary
This GeoField 2026 closing technical session examines the land monitoring systems and data infrastructure needed to support deforestation-free supply chains, conservation, and land use governance. The presentations bring together perspectives from global land cover science, digital public infrastructure, sustainable agricultural supply chains, and compliance with the European Union Deforestation Regulation.
Moderator: Richard Caldwell
Global Land Cover and Land Use Monitoring in Support of Environmental Sustainability
Matthew Hansen presents advances in global land cover and land use monitoring, drawing on public Earth observation systems such as Landsat and Sentinel-2. The presentation emphasizes that maps are powerful decision-support tools, but they contain error and should be paired with statistically valid approaches such as sample-based area estimation. Topics include forest loss and gain, crop expansion, crop type mapping, settlement mapping, tree height, near-real-time alerts, mining impacts, and land use attribution.
Digital Public Infrastructure for Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chains
Pascal Ripplinger and Remi Dannunzio present work on digital public infrastructure for sustainable agricultural supply chains. The presentation responds to fragmentation across proprietary traceability tools, datasets, and reporting systems by emphasizing open standards, shared semantics, interoperable building blocks, and transparent data governance. Examples include anonymous geolocation identifiers, offline field data collection tools, and API-based systems that generate plot-level land use information from global, regional, and national datasets.
Assessing the Use of Earth Observation for Compliance with the EU’s Deforestation Regulation
Ariel BenYishay and Elena Serfilippi present a Honduras coffee case study examining how Earth observation tools can support compliance with the European Union Deforestation Regulation. The study compares different geolocation systems, imagery sources, and compliance tools, while assessing how well they identify deforestation at the plot level. The findings highlight major variation across providers and limited agreement on individual plots, underscoring the need for transparent methods, cross-validation, locally relevant data, and systems that do not exclude smallholders.
Together, the session shows that Earth observation can play an important role in sustainable supply chains and land governance, but it cannot work in isolation. Effective systems require open data, credible statistical methods, interoperable infrastructure, locally relevant validation, clear data governance, and safeguards that protect both forests and farmers.