The 42 nd Asian Conference on Remote Sensing (ACRS2021) 22-24 th November, 2021 in Can Tho University, Can Tho city, Vietnam ANALYSIS OF FOREST COVER CHANGES AND FOREST GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES FROM 2011-2020 USING SATELLITE-DERIVED PRODUCTS Brent Fallarcuna 1 , Rizza Karen Veridiano 2 & Jose Andres Ignacio, PhD 1 1 Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC), 1/F Manila Observatory Building, Ateneo de Manila University Campus, Loyola Heights, Quezon City 1108, Philippines, Email: brentfallarcuna@essc.org.ph, andresignacio@essc.org.ph 2 Department of Ecology and Natural Resources Management, Center for Development Research (Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung), University of Bonn, Genscherallee 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany Email: rizzakaren.veridiano@gmail.com KEY WORDS: Deforestation, forest monitoring, forest dynamics ABSTRACT: Timely and spatially-consistent forest cover change information provide invaluable insights for stakeholders and policymakers in making appropriate interventions and responses in the field. In this context, freely available forest cover products derived from earth observation satellite data through the Landsat platform enable researchers to have an annual to decadal forest cover trend for the first two decades of the 21st century (Hansen et al., 2013). In this paper, we analyze annual forest cover loss and forest greenhouse gas (GHG) emission trends in the Philippines from 2011-2020 and group the findings with respect to the Philippines' 81 provinces. Results showed that Agusan del Sur (30,416.06 ha), Palawan (30,286.50 ha), and Zamboanga del Norte (10,165.96 ha) are the top three with regard to total forest loss. By comparing the provinces across similar scales, proportional forest losses were computed which showed that Zamboanga del Norte lost 13.31% of its year 2010 base forest cover, followed by Agusan del Sur (8.92%) and Tawi-tawi (8.55%, total loss = 3,373.10 ha). Ifugao (0.82, p < 0.05), Maguindanao ( r = 0. 80, p < 0.05) and Mountain Province (r = 0.78, p < 0.05) exhibited significant and increasing forest loss trends. In terms of forest GHG emissions, Agusan del Sur (25.6 Mt of CO2e), Palawan (22.3 Mt of CO2e), and Davao Oriental (8.7 Mt CO2e) topped the list while linear and increasing forest emission trends were observed for Mountain Province (r = 0.82, p < 0.05), Maguindanao (0.83, p < 0.05) and Ifugao (0.79, p < 0.05). This study may contribute to country- wide monitoring of forest cover change that can aid in identifying and prioritizing areas for intervention, possibly down to the municipal level. Therefore, forest-related programs on addressing and halting deforestation need to be re-evaluated in such provinces. 1. INTRODUCTION Deforestation continues in the 21 st century despite global commitments to address and reduce its rate if not halt it completely (Hansen et al., 2013; Austin et al., 2017; Lewis et al., 2015; Harris et al., 2017). Among the causes, crop commodity production for export is deemed as one of its major drivers along with forestry operations, shifting agriculture, and wildfires (Curtis et al., 2018). To address these issues, global commitments and programs were initiated like the United Nations Strategic Plan for Forests 2017–2030 and its Global Forest Goals (UN Forum on Forests, 2017), and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries or REDD+ (Angelsen, 2009). Based on the recent UN-FAO (2020) Forest Resource Assessment, global forest loss rate declined from 5.2 Mha/year in 2000-2010 to 4.7 Mha/year in 2010-2020 as a result of deforestation extent reduction, but the commodity driven deforestation has not declined since 2001 (Curtis et al., 2018). On the other hand, REDD+ achieved generally mixed and partly contradicting results due to its early phase of implementation (Arts, et al., 2019), low carbon price on international markets, low capacity of countries joining the program and the resulting red tape (Leblois, 2017; Simonet et al., 2014). The availability of data from Earth Observation (EO) satellites resulted in a new set of remote sensing products and tools that are specifically used for forest dynamics monitoring (Hansen et al., 2013; Achard et al., 2010). In the Philippines, this set of data has been utilized by various researchers to monitor and assess provincial annual forest cover changes (Fallarcuna and Perez, 2016), the National Greening Program (NGP) of the government (Perez et al., 2020), forest change patterns in protected areas (Apan et al., 2012), and inter-annual deforestation hotspot mapping (Araza, et al., 2020). In this paper, the Philippines’ forest cover change from 2011 -2020 are analyzed and provinces are identified with the most significant forest losses and trend patterns using the updated global forest change data of Hansen et al. (2013). In addition, forest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Harris et al., 2021 ) were also computed in relation to aforementioned forest change data to estimate forest GHG emissions resulting from complete forest stand-replacement.