A database on forest fires will tell you if the number of fires in the Amazon is increasing.

Another database will tell you about the weather. A third database will show you changes in land use. Yet another will store maps.

With all the different sources of information, how do you go about correlating   data to, say, find out if more fires are starting in cleared forest in the southern Amazon in the dry season than the wet?

The answer is simple: you use metadata. But what is metadata? According to CIFOR’s Geographical Information Services specialist, Atie Puntodewo, metadata is data about data - a kind of electronic index that contains a summary of information and its location.

“Metadata itself does not contain all the data. Instead it provides a short description about data and how to find it,” Puntodewo said. “This allows people to search for different types of information and merge it into an understandable form, which is usually a picture or a map.”

Researchers are using metadata to get simple answers from increasingly complex questions by using increasingly complex data. “Policymakers and forest users at the local, national and global levels need accurate and reliable information to make decisions about forest use and conservation,” said Joris Siermann, an Associate Expert in CIFOR's Information Services Group.

“Spatial forest information can provide a valuable insight into planning and decision making.”

This is the objective of the Forest Spatial Information Catalogue, currently being developed by Siermann and Purtodewo with financial support from the World Bank’s Global Public Goods Initiative.

“What we are creating is a catalogue of information sources for scientists and partners to use. The catalogue provides access to a wide range of forest-related data like forest cover, land use and forest management as well as results from spatial modeling, satellite images and base maps,” Siermann said.

Users can search the system by selecting a box somewhere on a world map or by typing one or more keywords. The catalogue has the added advantage of assisting researchers and other information producers make their findings accessible to users.

“The data are alive because the geographic information system experts in CIFOR use the database directly. We also provide other search engines with our metadata as well, like the International Union of Forest Research Organizations’ Global Forest Information Service* and in the near future the CGIAR's consortium for spatial information,” Purtodewo said.

The target audience is government analysts, conservation and development NGOs, producer organizations and researchers who need forest-related geospatial information for land use planning, forest resource assessment, carbon trading and biodiversity conservation.

According to Siermann, the data is structured so that it will help CIFOR’s partners make better-informed decisions based on knowledge-rich maps using data from many different sources. “Furthermore the on-line access allows potential users to overcome the hurdle of data ownership. The system's computers integrate the data when the user asks a question through the web browser, so there is no need to have the data on their own hard drives,” Siermann said. (PS)

The Forest Spatial Information Catalogue can be accessed at
http://gislab.cifor.cgiar.org/fsic
www.gfis.net