Mapping the World's Forest Data from Satellites With Alice Gottesman and Kai Kresek, Global Forest Watch

<p>What would it take to make "A Fitbit of the world's forests"? As you could imagine, it would be a momentous task. Global Forest Watch is doing it. It's one of the world's most technically ambitious ecological monitoring projects that maps and monitors the entire Earth's forest cover, with high-frequency updates, and ecological health insights, and displays it on&nbsp;a beautiful and easy-to-use browser interface.&nbsp;Global Forest Watch a partnership between the World Resources Institute and multiple philanthropic bodies, conversation NGOs, and universities.<br> <br> The technical intricacy of this project spans right from the satellites that collect the data through to processing the images, the algorithms that scan for tree cover and calculate changes, the depth of data in the electromagnetic spectrum and how it conveys ecological health, and how to get it all looking nice and loadable on a browser. And then there's the biggest question of all – how does all this data visualization <em>actually</em> help forests get protected <em>off</em> the computer?&nbsp; How do we use complex environmental data to drive change in the real world?<br> <br> <a href="https://www.globalforestwatch.org/" target="_blank" title="Link: https://www.globalforestwatch.org/">Global Forest Watch (GFW)</a> is a map-based platform that allows anyone to access near real-time information about where and how forests are changing around the world. See the <a href="https://www.globalforestwatch.org/" target="_blank" title="Link: https://www.globalforestwatch.org/">Global Forest Watch platform here.</a></p> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/globalforests">https://twitter.com/globalforests</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/globalforests">https://www.instagram.com/globalforests</a></p> <p>* * *</p> <p>How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science litera