1. Why forest monitoring matters for people and the planet / Ruth DeFries -- 2. Role of forests and impact of deforestation in the global carbon cycle / Richard A. Houghton -- 3. Use of earth observation technology to monitor forests across the globe / Frederic Achard and Matthew C. Hansen -- 4. Global data availability from U.S. satellites : Landsat and MODIS / Thomas R. Loveland and Matthew C. Hansen -- 5. Sampling strategies for forest monitoring from global to national levels / Stephen V. Stehman -- 6. Use of coarse-resolution imagery to identify hot spots of forest loss at the global scale / Matthew C. Hansen, Peter Potapov, and Svetlana Turubanova -- 7. Use of a systematic statistical sample with moderate-resolution imagery to assess forest cover changes at tropical to global scale / Frederic Achard. [and others] -- 8. Monitoring forest loss and degradation at national to global scales using Landsat data / Peter Potapov. [and others] -- 9. The Brazilian Amazon monitoring program : PRODES and DETER projects / Yosio Edemir Shimabukuro. [and others] -- 10. Monitoring of forest degradation : a review of methods in the Amazon Basin / Carlos Souza, Jr. -- 11. Use of wall-to-wall moderate- and high-resolution satellite imagery to monitor forest cover across Europe / Jesus San-Miguel-Ayanz. [and others] -- 12. Monitoring U.S. forest dynamics with Landsat / Jeffrey G. Masek and Sean P. Healey -- 13. Long-term monitoring of Australian land cover change using Landsat data : development, implementation, and operation / Peter Caccetta. [and others] -- 14. Assessment of burned forest areas over the Russian Federation from MODIS and Landsat-TM/ETM+ imagery / Sergey Bartalev. [and others] -- 15. Global forest monitoring with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data / Richard Lucas. [and others] -- 16. Future perspectives (way forward) / Alan Belward. [and others].