{"id":15818,"date":"2018-04-05T11:17:32","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T15:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=15818"},"modified":"2018-04-05T11:17:32","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T15:17:32","slug":"video-satellite-monitoring-of-forests-and-deforestation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=15818","title":{"rendered":"Video: Satellite monitoring of forests and deforestation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Satellites are key to monitoring the state of forests around the world (e.g. see posts here<\/a> and here<\/a>). The company Planet<\/a> has over 175 small satellites in orbit that are observing the earth and imaging the entire surface of the world every day, including views of every forest there is. In recognition of\u00a0International Day of Forests<\/a>\u00a0back on March 21st, Planet released a video showing 7000 thumbnail images of forests around the world taken in a single day:\u00a0Capturing the World\u2019s Forests Over a Single Day \u2013 Planet Stories \u2013 Medium<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/vimeo.com\/260994628<\/p>\n

From the Planet item:<\/p>\n

Pretty wild, right? Now what if we told you the video contains only a fraction of the total number of forest imagery Planet collects in a day\u200a\u2014\u200ain this case, around 95,000 images. Planet collects a massive amount of data each day and has around 500 images for any given location on Earth. To extract \u201cforests\u201d from this data, we used an algorithm built to detect forest cover, dense green imagery, and high near-infrared averages.<\/em><\/p>\n

To help people actually \u201csee the forests for the trees,\u201d we then applied more filters to those 95,000 images so those with lots of cloud cover or with visible defects were removed. (Fun fact: it would take around 30 minutes to watch all 95,000 images at 5 images per second\u200a\u2014\u200anot exactly optimized for social.) Afterward, we organized imagery by continent and built an animation to showcase the scale and diversity of forests globally.<\/em><\/p>\n

Such imagery is interesting but can also generated real data on the major problem of deforestation:<\/p>\n

Of course, forests are not always untouched, pristine places, but dynamic environments that change dramatically with human interaction. Sadly, the world loses an area of forest the size of 48 football fields\u00a0every minute\u00a0due to deforestation and forest degradation.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is an infographic sent to me by a reader illustrating that high rate of the loss of forests around the world:\u00a0The Scale of Deforestation – Eco2 Greetings<\/a><\/p>\n

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