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Global Forest Watch (GFW) is an online monitoring and alert system that aims to empower people to better manage forests. GFW uses satellite technology, open data, and crowdsourcing to offer timely, reliable information about forests so that governments, businesses and communities can halt forest loss.
When a tree falls in a forest, does anyone realize that it’s fallen? You might be surprised to learn that until now, the answer to this question has basically been “no.”
The latest news from FORMA demonstrates the power of global and regional economic cycles as drivers of deforestation. My previous post highlighted the rapid growth and spread of forest clearing during the first phase of the global economic recovery. Fortunately, new clearing has declined sharply since then, as the chart of FORMA's global indicator shows below. The effectiveness of forest protection may vary somewhat from quarter to quarter, but not nearly enough to explain such pronounced swings.
The latest news from FORMA (Forest Monitoring for Action) is very bad. Figure 1 shows that the FORMA index of global forest clearing rose 60% from January, 2007 to October, 2012. It declined during the economic crisis, from late 2008 to early 2010, but has climbed steadily since then. To make matters worse, this increase has been accompanied by rapid dispersion of clearing. As Table 1 shows, only Brazil has displayed a significant decline during the past five years. The FORMA indicator has increased slightly in Indonesia and sharply in other regions of Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. In January, 2007, Brazil and Indonesia accounted for 77.3% of the global indicator total. By October, 2012, their share had fallen to 39.4%.
This is a joint posting with Dan Hammer.
The climate negotiations in Copenhagen have galvanized the climate evangelists and skeptics alike; the talks, some say, are merely a front to assuage the general public, and will only divert attention from the scientific imperative to curb global carbon emissions. But one benefit of the talks has already been realized: They have catalyzed a flurry of activity, especially in the domain of monitoring and evaluation. Last week in Copenhagen, Google.org announced that it will provide free access to raw satellite imagery to facilitate global monitoring of deforestation, which may account for 15% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, Google.org has partnered with two leading forest scientists to host their image-parsing algorithms online, so that experts in developing countries can produce more accurate maps of forest cover loss from satellite images.
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