Sereisaophaon City Overview
Sereisaophaon city is the provincial capital of Banteay Meanchey province. It has a unique layout compared to many of Cambodia’s provincial capitals. The city sprawls around four noticeable mountains: Phnom Svay, Phnom Chanhchang, Phnom Bek, and Phnom Klakon. In the southern part of the city, the Sereisaophaon river winds around almost the entirety of the urban area.
With a population of around 100,000 people, Sereisaophaon is a small bustling city. The city’s mountainous surroundings and the river contribute to its scenic beauty, making it an attractive place for residents and visitors alike. The local economy is supported by agriculture, trade, and small-scale industries, whilst the river provides vital resources for irrigation and fishing. The unique topography and natural features also offer recreational opportunities and potential for eco-tourism, enhancing the quality of life for its inhabitants. To learn more about Sereisaophaon or Banteay Meanchey as a whole, heading to one of my past project with the provincial administration and GIZ at Invest in BMC.
Overview of the data
The very high-resolution global canopy map is the result of various high-detail satellite images stitched together from different temporal phases (2018 to 2020) and processed using an artificial intelligence model to identify trees at a 1-meter pixel-level scale.
The data is publicly available for download. However, I have processed it by clipping the global scale data to just the boundary of Sereisaophaon city, not the whole province. Due to the size of the data (380 mb), it may take some time to fully load in your browser, depending on your internet speed. I advise accessing this map on a computer browser rather than a mobile phone. Alternatively, you can try accessing it on Google Earth Engine.
I have made this data available for download. You will find one vector file, which is Phnom Penh Boundary (provided by The Humanitarian Data Exchange) and one raster file, which is this tree canopy height data.
It is the collaboration work between Meta, World Resources Institute, and Land & Carbon Lab. To learn more, head over to Meta’s blog post.
Urban Planning Implications
The potential implications for urbanism include urban tree monitoring, city carbon capture, and identifying tree pockets for conservation or establishing urban parks with existing tree patches. This data can also be used for further analysis of the relationship between green areas in the city and demography and population density. Additionally, benefits of trees and parks in urban areas extend toward improving air quality, reducing the urban heat island effect, enhancing mental and physical well-being, increasing biodiversity, providing recreational spaces, and contributing to stormwater management.
Data Limitation
The data is at a global scale, but not all regions have the same level of accuracy. To define the height data, airborne data is needed, and the majority of the world does not have sufficient coverage of lidar data. Moreover, some part of the regions in the satellite imagery contain blurry images, cloud obstructions, and cloud shadows.
Downloadable data: