Published in ERW, 6 Jun 2016
Satellite imagery can identify and alert authorities to disturbances in tropical forests, scientists have demonstrated. Based on computer analyses of NASA’s Landsat satellites, the system could track activities such as illegal logging, fire, agricultural encroachment and mining.
“Our work can be used as a basis of comparison for countries making [their own] forest-change map products,” said Matthew Hansen of the University of Maryland, US. “It also can serve as an impetus for countries to share their data, or to develop their own capability.”
Satellite-based systems for detecting forest disturbances already exist, such as the Real-Time System for Detection of Deforestation (DETER) or Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA). Most of these employ data sets that have a coarse spatial resolution, such as those from NASA’s orbiting Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument, which has a resolution of more than 250 m. […]
The rest of this article is available here.