Google mapping & charitable funding combine to show deforestation

The Global Forest Watch project may become a fantastic tool for consumers interested in finding out whether or not their products have really been sourced from responsibly felled trees or anybody interested in gaining an overall view on deforestation.

It's hoped Greenpeace will find solace in the Global Forest Watch project created this week by the World Resources Institute. The project currently has 40 partners, although it seems Greenpeace and the Forest Stewardship Council, mentioned in the first linked article here, have yet to sign up for the groundbreaking project. The major funders of this project were the Norwegian Climate and Forests Initiative, the U.S. Agency for International Development, UK Department for International Development, Global Environment Facility and the Tilia Fund. The project utilizes cloud computing services provided by the Google Earth project. Google mapping and new algorithms from the University of Maryland and it's hoped it will empower worldwide peoples to monitor deforestation and felling within their environments. The Pater Surui people of Brazil are already using smartphones and GPS programs to monitor illegal logging in their neighborhood. And it's felt this technology will enable other groups to monitor illegal tree cutting within their environments. The Global Forest Watch project illustrates almost real time deforestation on a worldwide mapping basis, as illustrated in this sister article from Digital Journal.