**4. Conclusions**

Colombia is considered a forestry country. The natural forest area covers 59′312.369 ha, which represents 51.9% of continental and insular Colombian territory. Nevertheless, in the last 27 years (1990–2017), Colombia lost more than 6.7 million ha

**49**

**Author details**

**Acknowledgements**

Edersson Cabrera1

Cristhian Forero1

Xavier Corredor1

Medellín, Colombia

Colombia

provided the original work is properly cited.

\*, Gustavo Galindo1

the GEF 5 Initiative "Corazón de la Amazonia."

, Alexander Cubillos1

, Leonardo Hurtado1

\*Address all correspondence to: ecabreram@ideam.gov.co

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

2 Departamento de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia—Sede

, Jose González1

, Javier Espejo1

, Diana Vargas1

1 Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies—IDEAM,

, Lina Vergara1

, Juan Rubiano1

and Alvaro Duque2

,

,

*Colombian Forest Monitoring System: Assessing Deforestation in an Environmental Complex…*

of natural forest, and in the last 5 years (2013–2017), the estimated forest loss was of 783,899 ha. This finding ranks Colombia within the top 15 countries with one of the highest forest covers on earth (52%) and shows the high utility and need to maintain and improve the Forest and Carbon Monitoring System for Colombia—SMByC. Overall, the SMByC is a prominent tool to help the country to accomplish with its commitments in terms of minimizing deforestation and carbon emissions in the coming decade. Forest monitoring indicators have a special importance to follow one of the goals established at 2030 for the Sustainable Development Goals—SGD, related to the conservation of at least 50% of the continental and insular territory covered by forests. Here, we show that based on the optimal use of digital image processing protocol, it is possible to generate reliable official information on the distribution, extension, and changes in forest cover at the national level. The SMByC will certainly

play a key role on facing the expected changes of the ongoing climate change.

Since many of the armed conflicts in tropical regions occur in areas with high forest cover, like the one we have had in Colombia, the main challenges for both society and government are to take advantage of the great opportunity contributing toward peacebuilding, reducing deforestation, while promoting sustainable development [40].

The authors express their special thanks to all of the assistants of the IDEAM

This work was supported by the REM Colombia Amazon Vision Program and

Forest and Carbon Monitoring System that helped with data processing. We emphasize on the help of Carol Franco, Rosa Lozano, Mónica Rivera, Omar Sotelo, Ivan Pérez, Edilneyi Zuñiga, and Alvaro Cubillos, and also, for all the support and

comments given by officials of the Ecosystems Division at IDEAM.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86143*

#### *Colombian Forest Monitoring System: Assessing Deforestation in an Environmental Complex… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86143*

of natural forest, and in the last 5 years (2013–2017), the estimated forest loss was of 783,899 ha. This finding ranks Colombia within the top 15 countries with one of the highest forest covers on earth (52%) and shows the high utility and need to maintain and improve the Forest and Carbon Monitoring System for Colombia—SMByC.

Overall, the SMByC is a prominent tool to help the country to accomplish with its commitments in terms of minimizing deforestation and carbon emissions in the coming decade. Forest monitoring indicators have a special importance to follow one of the goals established at 2030 for the Sustainable Development Goals—SGD, related to the conservation of at least 50% of the continental and insular territory covered by forests. Here, we show that based on the optimal use of digital image processing protocol, it is possible to generate reliable official information on the distribution, extension, and changes in forest cover at the national level. The SMByC will certainly play a key role on facing the expected changes of the ongoing climate change.

Since many of the armed conflicts in tropical regions occur in areas with high forest cover, like the one we have had in Colombia, the main challenges for both society and government are to take advantage of the great opportunity contributing toward peacebuilding, reducing deforestation, while promoting sustainable development [40].
