Using drones to monitor wildlife in India
Drones have been getting a bad rap lately and for good reason. However in the state of Assam, these commonly used weapons of warfare are being used to monitor the…
Male lions require dense vegetation for successful ambush hunting
Female lion with wildebeest kill in Tanzania. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. For a long time male lions were derided as the lazy ones in the pride, depending on females…
Featured video: Saving the Amazon through maps
In a new video ethnobotanist, Mark Plotkin, talks about recent—and historical—efforts to preserve the Amazon rainforest through map-making and technology. Today scientists like Plotkin are teaching indigenous people how to…
New forest map shows 6% of Amazon deforested between 2000 and 2010
RAISG's map of the Amazon. An update to one of the most comprehensive maps of the Amazon basin shows that forest cover across the world's largest rainforest declined by about…
3-D laser mapping shows elephants have big impact on trees
Herd of elephants crossing a river in Kenya. Photo by: Rob Roy. Scientists have long known that African elephants (Loxodonta africana) are talented tree-topplers, able to take down even large…
Global wetlands shrink 6% in 15 years
Map of extent of global wetlands. Courtesy of Prigent et al 2012. Click image to enlarge. Global wetlands declined by six percent between 1993 and 2007 due to conversion for…
Google brings Street View, Maps to the Amazon (photos)
The Google Street View team in the Brazilian Amazon. Courtesy of Google. Google has posted images of a stretch of rainforest and communities along the Amazon river on its Street…
Guyanese tribe maps Connecticut-sized rainforest for land rights
Overlooking rainforest in Guyana. Photo by: Jeremy Hance. In a bid to gain legal recognition of their land, the indigenous Wapichan people have digitally mapped their customary rainforest land in…
Rainforests store 229 billion tons of carbon globally finds ‘wall-to-wall’ carbon map
Biomass map. Courtesy of WHRC. Click here for a zoom-able version. Tropical rainforests store some 229 billion tons of carbon in their vegetation — about 20 percent more than previously…
Global map of REDD+ projects released
The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) on Saturday released a comprehensive map of the world's REDD+ programs. The map includes 340 REDD+ projects, programs, and policies in 52 countries.…
Community mapping of African rainforests could show way forward for preservation, REDD
Screenshot of new website of community mapping in central Africa's forests. A new initiative to place community mapping of central African rainforests online could prove key to local rights in…
New global carbon map for 2.5 billion ha of forests
2.5-billion-ha carbon map shows forests store 250B tons of carbon Forest carbon stock. Click image to enlarge Tropical forests across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia stored 247 gigatons of…
Forest carbon map released for the US
The National Biomass and Carbon Dataset (NBCD) map of the continental US courtesy of Woods Hole Research Center. Click to enlarge. The Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) has released the…
Indigenous peoples of Congo map their forests with GPS in an effort to save them
Indigenous peoples of Congo map their forests with GPS in an effort to save them Indigenous peoples of Congo map their forests with GPS in an effort to save them…