It started off as a side project. Global Forest Watch (GFW) user, JD*, had a day job at the time — and still does — working with NGOs on forest and land use issues in Malaysia. JD was frustrated with the difficulty of finding reliable maps of forest cover for the country. Much of the […]

By Sofia Soto Reyes Last year, Indonesia’s fire season was one of the worst on record. As such, vigilance in monitoring weather conditions is crucial. This task has been made easier as GFW Fires recently released a Fire Risk map. Satellite-based data on temperature, humidity, and rainfall is used to estimate how wet or dry tree […]

By Sarah Lake and Octavia Payne Half of all packaged consumer goods contain palm oil. Photo by 1Flatworld (Flickr). Half of all packaged consumer goods from shampoo to donuts contain palm oil, but the ubiquitous product comes at a cost—widespread deforestation from plantations, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, which produce 85 percent of all palm […]

By Nancy Harris and Sarah Sargent Tersedia dalam Bahasa sini. Peat drainage canals, combined with fire, are used to make land more suitable for agriculture. Photo by Julius Lawalata, World Resources Institute (Flickr). Tropical regions face an emissions challenge from an important, but relatively little-known source: drained peatland. Peat soil, made up of partially decomposed, wet […]

By Octavia Payne Tersedia dalam Bahasa sini. A male Sumatran tiger lying in the grass. Photo by Tambako The Jaguar (Flickr). Tigers are one of the most iconic yet one of the most endangered animals. Despite their popularity in books, films and religion, fewer than 3,500 remain in the wild today, due largely to agriculture, logging […]

By Mikaela Weisse The difference between forest and “tree cover” may be subtle, but it is important. Tree cover describes all trees and vegetation taller than 5m (the height at which they can be reliably detected by satellites) regardless of whether they’re part of a natural forest or have been planted by humans for agricultural […]

By Rachael Petersen, Liz Goldman, Mikaela Weisse and Dmitry Aksenov Which of the world’s forests are natural, and which have been planted by humans? Orangutans at Camp Leakey, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by James Anderson for WRI (Flickr). It seems like a simple question, but researchers have been struggling to answer it for years. Satellites can’t […]

By Rachael Petersen, Samantha Gibbes and Mikaela Weisse Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the historically richly forested island of Borneo suffers from high rates of deforestation, but understanding this dynamic is made difficult by government secrecy and lack of transparency. Official maps of logging, oil palm and wood fiber concessions for Sarawak are hard to come by; the government does not […]