Intact Forest Landscapes

An Intact Forest Landscape (IFL) is an unbroken expanse of natural ecosystems within the zone of current forest extent, showing no signs of significant human activity, and large enough that all native biodiversity, including viable populations of wide-ranging species, could be maintained.

The IFL concept and its technical definition were introduced to help create, implement, and monitor policies concerning the human impact on forest landscapes at the regional or country levels. The essence of our approach is to use high spatial resolution satellite information to establish the boundaries of large undeveloped forest areas, so called Intact Forest Landscapes (IFL), and to use these boundaries as a baseline for monitoring. Developed by a group of non-governmental environmental organizations (Greenpeace, World Resources Institute, Global Forest Watch, Biodiversity Conservation Center, International Socio-Ecological Union, and Transparent World), the IFL concept, mapping and monitoring algorithms have been used both in regional and global forest monitoring projects and in scientific research.

The world's IFL map is the first global assessment of large undeveloped forest areas based on high spatial resolution satellite imagery. The global map builds upon a number of regional IFL maps that were produced in 2001-2006, using similar methods, by a group of scientists and environmental non-governmental organizations. The use of a single set of criteria and source data allowed us to produce a globally consistent map and derive estimates of the level of intactness.

The significance of the IFL analysis method and map lies in its power to enable and catalyze practical conservation planning and action with regard to large undeveloped forest landscapes. Our map allows a user to determine whether a specific activity falls within or outside an IFL with a margin of error of less than 1 km. This map allows direct quantitative assessment and comparison of remaining large natural forest areas at global and national levels. The use of our maps has been mandated across the boreal regions as a condition for sustainability certification by the Forest Stewardship Council. All up-to-date IFL maps and IFL monitoring results are available online on this web-site in formats suitable for use in professional GIS (ArcGIS®) as well as in freeware GIS browsers (GoogleEarth™).

The IFL Mapping Team is continuing to improve the IFL base map and to provide periodically updates as new data, technologies, and more sophisticated sources of information appears. Local experts could play an important role in map improvement and update providing the latest information and comments for their regions of expertise. For this purpose, a continuous IFL map review process has been organized on the current web-site. Our Open IFL tool was designed to make this reviewing process easy and effective by using Google Maps® API integrated with Web-based GIS and internet forum platform.