KATHMANDU — When NASA’s Earth Observatory published a post on its website earlier this year describing how Nepal had regenerated its forests between 1992 and 2016, it received a lot…
ROBORÉ, Bolivia — Tucabaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve comprises around 2,644 square kilometers (1,021 square miles) of semi-arid forest and scrubland in the heart of southern Bolivia’s Chiquitania region. But…
Firefighters are working around the clock to protect a forested ranch in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state that’s an important refuge of the threatened hyacinth macaw. The Pantanal wetlands in which the ranch is located are experiencing severe wildfires, sparked by human activity and exacerbated by drought and climate change.
In a remote slice of Triunfo do Xingu, deep in Brazil’s northern Pará state, swaths of lush forest have been engulfed by flames in recent days. In another stretch to…
A canopy of thick smoke blanketed a vast patch of Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands, stretching as far as the eye could see. Underneath, flames were engulfing the yellowed grasslands of the…
Scientists have discovered a 'supercolony' of Adélie penguins in Antarctica's remote Danger Islands, raising hopes that the bird's population isn't declining as rapidly as previously thought. The discovery, which is…
Cambodia has one of the world's highest rates of deforestation, losing a Connecticut-size area of tree cover in just 14 years. This week, NASA released before-and-after satellite images of plantation…
Greenhouse gas emissions from peat fires in Borneo and Sumatra are currently exceeding emissions from the entire U.S. economy, putting Indonesia on track to be one of the world's largest…
While fires in Borneo and Sumatra are garnering most of the headlines for the choking air pollution they are causing across Southeast Asia, New Guinea is also experiencing widespread fire…
Global Forest Watch map showing forest loss between 2001 and 2013 in Peru's Alto Nanay Pintuyacu Chambira conservation area and Alto Purus National Park New NASA data shows a jump…
Global distribution of forest cover, circa-1990. Click image to enlarge Researchers have created a global map of the world's forests in the year 1990, enabling accurate comparisons between past and…
New satellite data from NASA suggests that deforestation is sharply increasing in Bolivia and Mekong countries during the second quarter of 2014. NASA's Quarterly Indicator of Cover Change (QUICC), a…
On Wednesday NASA successfully launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), a satellite that will track carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The two-year, $468 million mission will measure carbon dioxide concentrations…
Fire in Sumatra in February 2014. If fires return to Indonesia, they'd likely accelerate during the height of the dry season which coincides with July's presidential election. Environmental issues have…
After his wife died of an aneurysm at the age of 25, Pedro Martin Ureta set about to plant her a legacy: a forest in the shape of a guitar…
Close-up on GloF-DAS map data for Southeast Asia. Forest disturbance in Malaysia, Bolivia, Panama, and Ecuador surged during the first quarter of 2014, according to NASA data. NASA's Quarterly Indicator…
The Amazon rainforest. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Analysis of satellite imagery has cleared up a controversy over whether the Amazon rainforest 'greens up' during the dry season. The study,…
Temperatures in Alaska from January 23-30, 2014 as compared to same period average from 2001-2010. Image by: NASA. Alaska got California weather at the end of January, as displayed by…
Global warming continues apace as 2013 was the seventh warmest year in the past 133 years, according to a new analysis from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). In…
Also see our Top 10 HAPPY environmental stories of 2013. Elephant in South Africa. The poaching crisis in Africa is number six on our annual top ten list. Photo by:…
Forest loss in Indonesia has sharply risen over the past 12 years, reports a new study published in the journal Science. The study, led by Matt Hansen of University of…
Researchers today released a long-awaited tool that reveals the extent of forest cover loss and gain on a global scale. Powered by Google's massive computing cloud, the interactive forest map…
Loss of forest cover increased sharply in Bolivia, Madagascar, and Ecuador during the third quarter of 2013, according to an update from NASA scientists. NASA's Quarterly Indicator of Cover Change…
Loss of forest, woodland, and savanna increased sharply in Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Bolivia during the second quarter of 2013, reports a new assessment by…
A new mapping tool based on NASA satellite data confirms that the majority of fires that drove the recent haze over Sumatra and Malaysia were concentrated in deforested peatlands and…
New analysis of forest cover in Riau Province reveals the outsized role industrial plantations play in driving deforestation and associated haze. The analysis, conducted by Eyes on the Forest, a…
Deforestation jumped during the first three months of 2013 in Malaysia, Nepal and Mexico, according to a forest tracking tool developed by a team of NASA researchers. NASA's Quarterly Indicator…
33,000 square miles (85,500 square kilometers) or 2.8 percent of the Amazon rainforest burned between 1999-2010 finds new NASA-led research that measured the extent of fires that smolder under the…
Data from NAA's Landsat 8 is now freely available, enabling researchers and the general public to access images captured by the satellite within twelve hours of reception. The data is…
Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a 30-meter resolution forest cover data set that could boost efforts to track deforestation and forest degradation. The dataset, which is published…