Google joins space agencies in forest monitoring

October 23, 2009 by timbercommunity

Article from Reuters about deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia. "The only way to measure forests efficiently is from space," said Jose Achache, director of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), which is linking governments, space agencies such as NASA and others in a new partnership to measure forests.
Seven countries would act as pilot projects in 2009-10: Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Guyana, Indonesia, Mexico and Tanzania based on satellite images taken in recent months. Google have been working with United Nations Environmental Programme.

The UNEP overlay for Google Earth includes successive time-stamped images illustrating 100 areas of extreme environmental degradation around the world.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has dedicated a substantial part of its programmes to observing the Earth since the launch of its first meteorological mission.
Original article

Related organizations:
Google Earth site
Offers maps and satellite images for complex or pinpointed regional searches.

ESA's Earth Observation Science, Applications and Future Technologies unit