Lab 03 — Deforestation & IDEAM (public layers)
Spatial reading of deforestation and land-cover change in Colombia via public layers/geoservices (IDEAM and related sources), with citations and methodological limits.
- Objective
- Show how to integrate official or open-data forest/deforestation cartography in a reproducible map—no scrapers—preferring WMS/WFS, REST or versioned snapshots.
- Methodology
- 1) Inventory public layers: IDEAM geoservices (forest, land-cover change, hazard if relevant), datos.gov.co datasets, and references (e.g. SMBYC / annual reports) as citation only. 2) Pick 1–3 stable layers (documented WMS or other endpoint) or a curated GeoJSON/snapshot under /public/data/. 3) Leaflet map: neutral basemap + layers with opacity and legend; temporal filter if the source allows. 4) Fact sheet with variable dictionary, units (ha, rate, class) and metadata link. 5) (Deferred) The earlier precipitation WMS demo is removed from this card so climate is not mixed with deforestation.
- Limitations
- Resolution, cut-off years and “forest/deforestation” definitions vary by product; not a substitute for official monitoring. WMS availability depends on the server. Global Forest Watch or other global layers are support, not a replacement for the chosen Colombian source.
Sources & APIs
- IDEAM — geoservicios OGC / ArcGIS REST
WMS/WFS and MapServer; series also via datos.gov.co.
Docs - Datos Abiertos Colombia (datos.gov.co)
SODA/Socrata portal: REST + SoQL per dataset (Export → API).
Docs