NASA Tool Shows Where Forest Is Being Cut Down

terrancem writes "A new tool developed by NASA and other researchers shows where forest is being chopped down on a quarterly basis. The global forest disturbance alert system (GloF-DAS) is based on comparison of MODIS global vegetation index images at the exact same time period each year in consecutive years. GloF-DAS could help users detect deforestation shortly after it occurs, offering the potential to take measures to investigate clearing before it expands."

Comments

Oh, acronyms.

[musicalmicah]

I kept reading it as GLaDOS instead of GloF-DAS.

What does NASA stand for again?

[Compaqt]

National Aeronautics and Space Administration^H^H^H^H^H

National Assorted Stuff Agency

Re:What does NASA stand for again?

[utkonos]

You're saying that a software tool developed by NASA to interpret data from a scientific instrument aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites orbiting Earth is something strange or outside of their mission? All you really did by making that comment was to put your ignorance on public display.

Replanting?

[flyingfsck]

How about showing where forests are replanted? In North Ameria, more than 2 billion trees are planted each year and the total forest coverage of the continent has increased considerably over the past century.

Re:Replanting?

[DeathElk]

Reforestation is fine and good, and an essential part of mining, agriculture and other planned land use that involves clearing. What this tool provides is insight into illegal deforestation, which can have a significant local impact on soil salinity, erosion and vulnerable native species.

OK, I've said my bit. So bring on the rednecks whining about humans and their commercial needs overriding the needs of trees and animals, whilst completely ignoring the fact that the wellbeing of humans is directly impacted by the wellbeing of the environment in which they live.

Re:Replanting?

[TapeCutter]

It does, it's all in the way you read the map, for example in a traditional topology map you can see valleys AND you can see hills, does the fact that erosion exits mean the hills are getting smaller or the valleys are getting wider? The global trend is currently toward deforestation so the article takes that as the background context, there is no need to feel your nation has been slandered. Look up "how to grow a rainforest" on TED talks if you're really interested in seeing how this technology has been used exactly as you propose for last 20yrs and with spectacular results.

Re:Replanting?

[Grayhand]

How about showing where forests are replanted? In North Ameria, more than 2 billion trees are planted each year and the total forest coverage of the continent has increased considerably over the past century.

Actually most of what is replanted is what people intend to cut as soon as possible. Here in Maine the moment trees reach a marketable size they are cut. I had a real estate agent refer to 30 year old trees as old growth. The forests used to extend from coast to coast except for the great plains and the deserts. A small percentage remains even with the replanting. Trees are pretty critical to the environment. They're a major source of oxygen, plankton in the oceans are the number one source. They are also one of the bigger carbon sinks so when trees are cut down they stop collecting and any parts that are burned or allowed to rot release the carbon. You talk about the last century but the largest reduction in forest coverage has happened in the last century. Even in the states replanting was rare until the last 50 years and even now most that are planted are earmarked for cutting as I said. Old growth are generally forests that have never been cut but that's probably less than 1% believe it or not. These days mature trees are called old growth but even that is misleading because a tree that is 30 to 50 years old and is 35 to 50 foot tall isn't old growth when the same species reaches 80+ feet and a 150 years old. A number of species reach a 100 to 200 foot tall, even White Oaks reach a 100', but trees of that size which used to be common are now rare. We can't keep leveling forests and burning fossil fuels without seeing a backlash. It's important to keep track of losses and gains.

Re:Replanting?

[mosb1000]

There seems to be this hypothesis going around that the environment is like a fragile house of cards, and disrupting a single part of it could cause the whole thing to collapse. This is the mentality that "rednecks" are complaining about. People who live and work in nature (rednecks, as you call them) know that the environment is damn near unstoppable (even annoyingly so at times). And they resent being "educated" by urbanites about the "frail" nature of the environment, which they know is actually quite robust.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about the state of the environment. Certainly large scale destruction is possible, and would cause hardship to the earth's human populations. But that doesn't justify the outrageously conservative attitude that any environmental destruction at all must be avoided. You can cut the top off a mountain to get at what's underneath and the environment will recover. You can melt the icecaps and the environment will recover. It's all about measured risk, you need to make sure the rewards outpace the risks.

Re:Replanting?

[mosb1000]

What does it matter if the trees being planted will be cut? They will just be replanted again.

Re:Replanting?

[drinkypoo]

There seems to be this hypothesis going around that the environment is like a fragile house of cards, and disrupting a single part of it could cause the whole thing to collapse.

Some people think that, true. But that's not the only argument for not killing everything you see.

People who live and work in nature (rednecks, as you call them) know that the environment is damn near unstoppable (even annoyingly so at times).

That sentence doesn't really make any sense. "The environment" is unstoppable? So apparently is the idiocy of your comment. That doesn't fucking mean anything. Individual species are "stopped" all the time.

Certainly large scale destruction is possible, and would cause hardship to the earth's human populations

Yes, and large-scale deforestation causes hardship to the earth's human population (we're all in this together) so what the fuck are you bitching about? You just like bitching about them damn vironmentalists with all their concerns?

Re:Replanting?

[buchner.johannes]

Monocultures are not good --- and not as robust as the mix that was there before. There will be fewer animals living in a forest that is constantly disturbed.

Re:Replanting?

[ebuck]

Environments do sustain themselves; however, they do not always sustain the populations within the environment. That might seem like a fine distinction; but, please pay attention to it, as we humans are the largest (and therefore the most likely to be upset by change) consumers of the environment.

If wood disappears, housing costs will triple as we move to steel beam or concrete construction. The wood houses tend to disenigrate in 50 to 70 years, and economical concrete supplies are already limited, so a sustained loss of wood means massive disruption in building due to lack of traditional materials. New materials can be used, but there are not a lot of great options. If there were, we would already be using them.

If the environment creeps upwards a degree or two, vegatation will still suffer and rebound. During that transition, there will be a vegatation problem. Plants tolerate extreme temperature, but they cannot migrate; so, when a plant dies of heat or drought, it takes time before other plants that can handle the extremes can be estabilshed. The resulting loss of biomass directly translates into less plant respiration, which cools the earth crust by forcing evaoporation.

I live in Redneck Central, was raised here, and I have a Biology degree. I'll go out on a limb here and state that most Rednecks are quick to dismiss any argument that inconveniences them. That doesn't mean they are stupid, but they do have a tendancy to not invest much time in thinking about issues that extend beyond the self. The envrionment is funny, you can dismiss it when there is plenty of land that is not impacted, and that works well for Rednecks; however, when you run out of pristine environment, problems incurr. It is not any particular Billy Bob that is destroying the environment on a grand scale singlhandedly, it is that a few hundred million Billy Bobs are all assuming that their impact is so small, each with a centerist view of the world, that they cannot all understand that if they all act in unison to consume just a little less, it is hundreds of millions of fewer demand on an environment that is already providing them with more biomass and derivatives than nearly any other animal receives.

Re:Replanting?

[phantomfive]

Because with this tool, they'll know how many trees are replanted, instead of making wild guesses like you just did? More data is always a good thing.

Re:MOST LIKELY WHERE THE TREES ARE ??

[TapeCutter]

Despite our best attempts to eliminate trees there are still vast and physically remote areas of the planet that are chock full 'em. In some of these areas illegal logging and clearing occurs on a massive scale, (which for some bizzare reason is often estimated in units of footy fields lost per minute). Surveys such as this provide a valuable tool for answering such questions as; Who's stealing the people's (or plantation owner's) property? Where is poverty, neglect, or overuse causing a detrimental impact to both people and environment? How can we make best use of our aid/environment dollar to try and reverse, or at least slow, the trend in the fastest growing areas?

Re:So? What are you actually going to do about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it would be quite useful. I have a small house in an Eastern European country, which happens to be in an area where a EU-funded biofuel power plant is in operation. It took us (a small group of volunteers) nearly two years to notice and confirm that "biofuel" meant wood that is cut from a nearby forest and then burned in the plant.

Took us that long to notice, because the forest is quite large, the cutting operation was carried out as routine forest maintenance (or whatever you call the regular cutting down of fallen and broken trees in English) and was started well inside the forest - a remote area that is hard to access anyway. In the end, the late discovery of the operation (and a host of other, political issues) made it impossible to save much. Had we found out about it earlier, the outcome would have been different.

What if ...

[Taco Cowboy]

What if they destroy virgin tropical forest and replace it with oil palm plantations?

Satellite looking down will still see trees, it's just different kinds of trees, but the virgin forest, with all its original flora and fauna, wiped out forever

Like what happened in Sumatra, Indonesia, where 4 very rare Sumatran Elephants were killed recently because their habitat were destroyed

Re:What if ...

[Immerman]

That would be easy enough to detect if they were using spectral analysis, different plants having different spectral properties, a fact often used by researchers to distinguish between (for example) old-growth and new-growth forest in overhead shots. That would probably yield a lot of false-positives though as vegetation changes naturally, it sounds like they're starting out with the low-hanging fruit and just looking for significant drops in greenness level. That might well still detect your scenario though, a palm plantation is unlikely to be anywhere near as green as virgin forest, especially in the first few years. You'll have an awful lot of ground visible between trees and through the fronds, where before you'd be seeing solid canopy.

Re:What if ...

[riverat1]

A monoculture of palms would look considerably different to a satellite than a tropical rain forest. I doubt they'd have any difficulty distinguishing between the two.

Do better

[sehryan]

I don't mean to sound like a dick, but as someone who makes web-based geospatial apps for a living, this is one of the worst things I have ever seen.

Half the zooms don't make sense (US zooms all the way out, UK zooms to all of Europe), they have data listed in the drop downs that doesn't actually exist (July 2012), the popups tell you nothing (Country: Whatever, colored in blue, but not clickable), and to top it all of, the "larger" version has no way to access any of the data (no data selection, no zoom levels).

Re:Typical, politically-biased title

[Immerman]

And yet - the tool's stated purpose is to help identify illegal logging and other disruptive human behavior so that it can be investigated as soon as possible. How would identifying reforestation sites help with that goal? Reforestation is extremely unlikely to require intervention of any sort.

My understanding is that the target audience for this tool is not arm-chair environmentalists so much as policymakers and enforcement agencies in the individual countries where the damage is occurring. Especially if the clearing is being done in out-of-the-way locations (a common theme for illegal activity) an under-funded enforcement agency would have a very difficult time detecting it without a tool like this. If the arm-chair set can also use it to detect local problems and raise the alarm so much the better. Likewise in areas where locals may be harvesting the forest for fuel and lumber - this can raise the alarm among policymakers that they have a non-organized deforestation problem which may merit some form of intervention before it becomes a real problem, after all if the locals are over-harvesting the forest today then in a few years there's going to be a resource shortage that causes problems.

As for forest fires, etc - I'd say that's where human judgement comes in. This is an automated tool to raise red flags where "Hey, vegetation levels have dropped 40% in this location since last year" so it can be investigated. You can then go out to investigate why and say "oh, forest fire, it'll be back in a couple years no big deal" or "hey look, a logging/farming/etc operation, send in the troops".

As the loggers, etc learn of this tool I wouldn't be surprised if at least some got more discrete. 40% clearance will raise an alarm? okay, let's just take 30% and try not to damage the remaining vegetation any more than necessary so greenness will stay up and we can keep operating in the area. At that point you start moving towards the realm of managed wilderness. Granted they'll be cherry-picking the high-value trees and freaking out the local wildlife, but the local ecosystem will be able to recover from that a lot faster than from clear-cutting.