Mapping the World's Forest Data from Satellites, Alice Gottesman + Kai Kresek Global Forest Watch Ep 46
What would it take to make "A Fitbit of the world's forests"? As you could imagine, it would be a momentous task. Global Forest Watch is doing it. It's one of the world's most technically ambitious ecological monitoring projects that maps and monitors the entire Earth's forest cover, with high-frequency updates, and ecological health insights, and displays it on a beautiful and easy-to-use browser interface. Global Forest Watch a partnership between the World Resources Institute and multiple philanthropic bodies, conversation NGOs, and universities. The technical intricacy of this project spans right from the satellites that collect the data through to processing the images, the algorithms that scan for tree cover and calculate changes, the depth of data in the electromagnetic spectrum and how it conveys ecological health, and how to get it all looking nice and loadable on a browser. And then there's the biggest question of all – how does all this data visualization actually help forests get protected off the computer? How do we use complex environmental data to drive change in the real world? Global Forest Watch (GFW) is a map-based platform that allows anyone to access near real-time information about where and how forests are changing around the world. See the Global Forest Watch platform here. https://twitter.com/globalforests https://www.instagram.com/globalforests * * * How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Join Gamify the Planet Masterclass Training in Climate Action Design for $25/month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet Get a copy of the book, How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Follow Katie on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn