Thanks to the rollout of free, high-resolution satellite imagery, the job of monitoring deforestation in tropical forests just got a lot easier. Last year Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment…
All told, this was a pretty bleak year. The COVID-19 pandemic brought tragedy and confusion; fires razed parts of Australia, the Amazon, and the Western U.S.; and the world is…
The advent of the Amazon soy moratorium in 2006 seemed to usher in a new era of hope for ending deforestation for food production in the world’s largest rainforest. From…
1. The ocean in a worldwide pandemic As the year that challenged the world with a widespread pandemic draws to a close, COVID-19 has affected almost every aspect of life…
A long and intense fire season is exacting a grim toll across Madagascar. At its onset in May, a wave of fires ate into the dry forests that line the…
Of the world’s remaining forests, only 40% are intact, with high ecological integrity, according to data from the newly developed Forest Landscape Integrity Index, the first of its kind to…
JAKARTA — An area of natural forest the size of 1,500 football fields has been cleared since January in an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua by…
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 50 percent in October, ending a streak where the region's deforestation rate had declined for three straight months, according to data released Friday by…
Brazil’s mining authority is actively entertaining more than 3,000 requests to mine on Indigenous lands in the Amazon, despite such activity being prohibited under the country’s Constitution, an investigation by…
JAKARTA — Palm oil giant Korindo Group is alleged to have set fires to clear rainforest in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua, a practice that is banned by law. The…
Today, maps are a critical part of nearly all place-based conservation efforts. Maps enable scientists and conservation practitioners to identify where they operate, allocate resources, organize and present data, and…
The Arctic is setting records for low sea ice extent for this time of year, with the 2020 refreeze now 500,000+ square kilometers behind a record set in 2019 — a sign the region may be entering a new climate regime.
In late June, a fleet of about 300 Chinese fishing vessels swarmed around the rich, biodiverse waters of the Galápagos Islands, armed with overhead lights and industrial jigging machines to…
Traditional Amazonian populations have used fire for agricultural purposes for centuries, but leaving space for the forest to regenerate. The climate crisis, however, is making it increasingly difficult to control the fires. A project in the state of Pará promises an alternative to fight them.
Indigenous people say the fires “came from outside” and “destroyed everything,” including the food and medicinal plants that form an important part of their culture.
337,427 square kilometers of Amazon forest were degraded between 1992 and 2014 ¬(mostly due to logging and understory fires), compared to 308,311 square kilometers completely cleared.
For three decades, INPE, Brazil’s civilian space agency has successfully and publicly monitored Amazon deforestation and fires. Now Jair Bolsonaro is intent on giving the job over to the secretive Brazilian military.
Satellites are powerful tools for monitoring deforestation. Now, a new partnership aims to make high-resolution, satellite imagery of the tropics free and accessible to everyone. Norway's Ministry of Climate and…
2020 didn’t eclipse all-time record-holder 2012, but it came pretty close; also, the Arctic’s growing heat is likely intensifying Asia’s extreme weather, while waters just beneath the ice are getting increasingly warm.
A new automated near real time fire monitoring system could inform smarter strategies and solutions for curbing Amazon fires and reducing impacts; researchers call it a valuable tool for Amazon conservation.
This year’s Amazon fire season is one of the most serious ever, even though it’s not attracting near the media attention as last year. More than one thousand major fires…
There have been more fires alerts around the world this year than last year, spelling dire consequences for health, biodiversity, and the economy — and human actions are mostly to…
674 major Amazon fires were detected between May 28 and September 2, with the Brazilian government failing to control most blazes. Remote Indigenous communities are especially threatened.
When the wild pangolin was rescued, she was in bad shape: dehydrated, emaciated, and weighing a mere 4.9 kilograms (10.8 pounds). She was also very young, but this was a…
An area nearly 5 times that of New York City’s land area has burned so far in 2020, most of it recently deforested, and now illegally burned over, to make way for new cattle pastures and croplands.
The world watched in horror and surprise as the Amazon burned in 2019, windblown smoke darkening the sky over far-off São Paulo, Brazil. The ability to predict where fires are…
As the 2020 Amazon fire season moves toward its August peak, hundreds of blazes — almost all in Brazil, mostly illegal, and some on conserved lands — have been detected: Report.
New satellite data shows major tree loss, while Brazil’s VP cherry picks the findings, according to experts. Meanwhile, the environment minister appears to welcome illegal miners’ demands for less enforcement.
This week, Greenpeace International released a series of dramatic photos revealing megafires burning in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, Russia. The images, captured on July 16 by drone, show red…
Using the customizable app ForestLink, traditional forest guardians (people living within and around the forest) can send near-real-time, geo-tagged alerts about illegal logging and mining activities to authorities and other…
