METHOD · ACCOUNTABILITY
Canopy change and the tree-replacement rule.
A way to read, at a chosen site, whether canopy lost to development has come back, using the same public satellite record the rest of this site is built on. This is a method, not a verdict: it points you at what to check, it does not decide whether any rule was followed.
The replacement rule
When a permit allows a naturally-growing tree to be cut for a development project, DENR Memorandum Order 2012-02 sets a replacement-planting obligation. The ratio is tiered: up to 100 replacement trees for each naturally-growing tree cut for development, fewer for planted trees, and none for timber-plantation stock. It is written in support of the National Greening Program. Source: DMO 2012-02 (DENR-FMB).
Whether those replacement trees are planted, and whether they survive, is a separate question. The government's own auditor found it is largely not tracked: the Commission on Audit's 2019 performance audit of the National Greening Program reported that "the actual progress / survival of trees planted on these sites cannot be monitored," with no central database and only 5–10% field sampling. That gap, between a replacement obligation on paper and an unmonitored outcome on the ground, is what this page lets you look at from above.
A note on scope: this is the same point the README makes plainly. Leaves.PH is not a permit-compliance tool. It computes canopy fractions from public satellite imagery. It cannot see a permit, a tree count, or a planting record. It can show you where canopy has and has not changed, and tell you how to request the rest.
Check a site
Pick one of the 892 NCR barangays. You get two independent readings for that area: the canopy trajectory from this site's published model (2019–2026), and the stand-replacement canopy loss the Hansen Global Forest Change record flags there. Read them together, with the limits noted under the chart.
Loading the 892-barangay record…
Canopy trajectory (model)
Cross-sectional snapshots, not a change series. 2026 is provisional (imagery Jan–May only).
Hansen loss (independent)
Stand-replacement loss only, ~30 m, cumulative 2001–2025. Sub-pixel and partial-canopy thinning may not register; the detection year is approximate.
Statistical indicators derived from public-record satellite data. Patterns may have legitimate explanations. This is not a compliance finding and has no legal value. Canopy is a vegetation proxy, not a tree count.
What this can and cannot tell you
It can
- Show the canopy trajectory at a site, year by year, with the model's known margin.
- Show where Hansen flagged a stand-replacement loss event near a site (≈30 m), as an independent record.
- Point you to the documented route for requesting the permit and replacement record.
- Note that a flat or rising area-wide reading can still hide local loss offset by gain elsewhere.
It cannot
- Decide whether a replacement obligation was or was not met. That needs the permit record.
- Prove the same trees grew back. The model reads canopy presence per year, not tree identity.
- Give an exact per-location year a tree was cut. Hansen's loss year is an approximate detection year.
- Resolve a single street tree or a small lot. Below ≈30 m, change is not independently visible.
The standard for a defensible change claim is a stratified reading with an uncertainty band, not a binary yes/no. We follow that here: two independent signals, each with its limits stated, and no verdict drawn for you. The Hansen forest-gain layer is frozen at 2000–2012, so post-2012 recovery is read from the model trajectory, never claimed from Hansen gain.
How to check it yourself
Permit and replacement records are not published in a single open dataset. They exist, but you have to ask for them. The documented routes:
- DENR-NCR. Special tree-cutting permits in Metro Manila are issued and held at the regional office. A national Freedom of Information request for a specific project's permit is typically routed here; file through foi.gov.ph and address it to DENR-NCR. Expect to name the project and location precisely; a documented MRT-7 request was bounced because the receiving office did not hold the file.
- Quezon City. The Parks Development and Administration Department issues a Certificate of No Objection as part of a tree-cutting permit, and applications must include a site plan showing the affected trees. There is no public registry of issued permits; request directly at pdad@quezoncity.gov.ph.
- Infrastructure projects. Road-widening and similar works carry an Environmental Compliance Certificate from the Environmental Management Bureau, which can list tree-cutting and replacement conditions. Start at emb.gov.ph and the ECC Online system; the per-project search surface is limited, so an FOI request is often the reliable path.
- Your own LGU. Tree-cutting in NCR generally needs both a city permit and DENR clearance. Ask your city environment or parks office for the permit and the required replacement count, then compare it against the canopy reading above.
Related work
Public satellite monitoring of forest loss is well established, and this page builds on it rather than claiming new ground in detection:
- Global Forest Watch runs four public near-real-time deforestation alert systems (GLAD-L, GLAD-S2, RADD, and the integrated alert), and its country dashboards already report Philippine tree-cover loss.
- GFW Pro already maps loss against legal obligations, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation cutoff and national forest laws. It is a private supply-chain due-diligence tool, currently covering four countries (not the Philippines) and scoped to deforestation cutoffs, not replacement-planting ratios. Like this page, GFW states its maps have no legal value.
- DENR, with PhilSA, has reported building a geospatial database to monitor the national reforestation program. A 2024 study also applied remote sensing to prioritise tree planting across NCR.
What is distinct here is narrow and worth stating plainly: an open, per-barangay, interactive canopy reading for Metro Manila, framed around the specific DENR replacement rule, with the request route attached. The detection is not novel; the local, public, replacement-rule framing is.
The model behind the trajectory is documented on the methodology page (F1 0.78 against 656 hand-labelled high-resolution pixels). The per-barangay data, including the Hansen loss column, is on the data page.