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."

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?

[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: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.

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?

[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?