The Land Portal Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, recently released what it’s calling “the largest global database of land and property rights projects.” In around a decade…
JAKARTA — A court in Indonesia has ordered the government to publish detailed maps of oil palm plantations in the country’s easternmost Papua region, an area increasingly targeted by the…
MANILA — The European Union and the Philippine government are close to sealing a partnership that will provide free, open and unlimited access to raw Earth observation data to monitor…
Rare plant species are far more likely to go extinct than common species, yet we know surprisingly little about global species abundance. Most efforts to quantify species abundance focus on…
Behind the sand dunes of the Dampier Peninsula, in the far west of the Kimberley region of Australia, the landscape is alive, the air filled with the sound of great…
In a recently published study, Canadian researchers monitored the fine-scale movements of GPS-tagged fishers (Pekania pennanti), a member of the weasel family, across a terrain of over 700 protected areas…
Spanning nearly 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) along the coast, Ecuador’s Chocó region is known as a biodiversity hotspot with high levels of endemism, among the richest region for…
Commercial agriculture drives some 40 percent of deforestation in the tropics, as suppliers clear forest to plant soy, oil palm, rubber, and cacao or to raise beef cattle. More than…
In mid-May Chile finalized an agreement to publicly share proprietary data from its satellite system for monitoring fishing boats, known as a Vessel Monitoring System. The country will share the…
JAKARTA — Many of the fishing vessels operating in Indonesia’s waters at night do so undetected, masking what could be illegal fishing on a massive scale, according to a new…
Faster and cheaper Surveying and studying coral takes a lot of work. It’s usually done manually, which requires wet suits and air tanks and SCUBA gear and people. But it’s…
Remember that 3-meter (17-foot) pregnant Burmese python recently captured by wildlife authorities in southern Florida? These snakes, invasive to North America and destructive to native wildlife, are cryptic in both…
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. DARIÉN GAP, Panama — There is a land at the center of the Americas that is said to remain in…
Sophie Chao is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney, whose work focuses on the impacts of agribusiness on the peoples and environments of the Asia-Pacific and Melanesia…
The big cats of Java haven’t had it easy. First to vanish was the Sunda clouded leopard, a small species that today survives only on Borneo and Sumatra. Next to…
Human-dominated mangroves are far from what is considered an ideal environment for otters. And yet an estuarine island on India’s western coast is home to a thriving population of the…
Researchers and forest managers working to record and reduce the rapid loss of forests are now armed with a new tool to monitor vegetation across the globe. In December 2018,…
Spatial data from satellites are now fine-scale enough to provide land use and vegetation cover information at the level of individual farms. An international team of researchers examined the potential…
CHENNAI, India — In a small fishing hamlet, one of thousands dotting India’s 7,500-kilometer (4,660-mile) coastline, a community leader opens his smartphone and searches his contacts for “Map Saravanan” to…
If you know the animals in your neighborhood but not the plants, you’re not alone. Scientists have documented nearly 400,000 plant species and expect to identify many more. But unlike…
You can now speak into your mobile phone and have it produce written text. Then have Google translate your words into Japanese, or Hindi. In two seconds. These examples of…
1. The race is on to map the seafloor Is it true that we have explored the moon and Mars more thoroughly than the bottom of the ocean? Embarrassingly, yes.…
Illegal mining has become an “epidemic” in the Amazon rainforest, destroying naturally protected areas and threatening indigenous territories, according to a new joint study by six Amazonian countries. The crux…
On a midsummer evening earlier this year, Tracy Pham was on a walk along Huntington Beach, California, an outing she usually made to photograph birds. This time, along the way,…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government has published a long-awaited map that, for the first time, unifies all land-use data from a host of disparate sources. The fractured nature of the…
KATHMANDU, Nepal — As dawn peeks through the morning mist on an early spring day in Nepal's Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, a duck-sized bird flaps its wings and throws itself…
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — In a bid to beef up fisheries security, Panama and Namibia have announced their intentions to make information on the location of fishing boats in their…
Most of Kenya is arid, and lengthy droughts can lead to livestock loss, illegal grazing in protected areas, and violent interactions between nomadic herders and other landowners. Less known are…
NYERI, Kenya - It took nine hours for Margaret Wanjugu and neighbors to put out a fire that razed Gathorongai forest near her home in central Kenya, in 2016. She…
The iNaturalist species data- and image-sharing platform reached a milestone earlier this month with its one millionth observer. The platform consists of a mobile app and corresponding website that help…
