Sumatra: As technology develops a tree falling in the forest will soon be heard by all
Also: Landmark Freedom of Information Act will help protect Sumatra’s forests! (see below)
Despite many years of research in conservation biology, precise maps
of tropical deforestation that document the global spatial extent of
tropical forests destruction are generally not available outside of
the scientific community, says David Gaveau a researcher from Durrell
Institute of Conservation and Ecology. For nearly seven years, Gaveau
has been documenting forest destruction on the island of Sumatra since
early 1970s using satellite technology.
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All tree news about Sumatra:
http://forestpolicyresearch.com/category/oceania-tree-news/sumatra/
In a move to support the Indonesian government in its mission to
inform the general public and decision makers about the true scale of
environmental destruction on the island of Sumatra, Gaveau created the
first world’s website (sumatranforest.org) that puts precise maps of
tropical deforestation freely at user’s fingertips.
Through a link on the website, maps of tropical deforestation will unfold onto Google’s digital Earth in full resolution (up to 1:150,000 scale). Internet
users will obtain a bird’s-eye view of Sumatran forest landscapes, and
the threats they are facing inside and outside protected areas. “Among
the most inspiring and challenging duties we face in the conservation
community, is to put the full range of tropical deforestation
worldwide for everyone to see to improve ecological transparency, a
key requirement of sound environmental governance,” said Gaveau.
Gaveau is now working towards the development of a free online
cartographic database of the Earth’s tropical forests, and hopes to
find investors that are willing to fund this effort. “Our duty is to
put the full range of tropical deforestation worldwide for everyone to
see.”
Sumatra has lost roughly half of its forest cover since 1985,
mostly due to logging and conversion for agriculture. Environmental
group WWF says there has been an 84 percent decline in elephant
populations and a 70 percent in the number of Sumatran tigers on the
island since 1982.
http://www.sumatranforest.org/
The Indonesian government recently passed a Freedom of Information Act to disclose environmental information to the general public. But, its efforts to conserve Indonesia’s forests have been undermined by a lack of reliable information on their status and on the threats they faced [3]. The Indonesian government announced a landmark agreement with the NGOs at the October 2008 Barcelona IUCN World Conservation Congress to reduce tropical deforestation in Sumatra, Indonesia’s second largest island [4]. Sumatra, is the only place on Earth where all the animal characters of Walt Disney’s animation feature film the ‘Jungle Book’ co-exist, including tigers, elephants, leopards, pythons, bears and orangutans. Sumatran deforestation has recently become a global issue because it accelerates climate change [5,6]. The lack of free and easy access to reliable maps of Sumatran forests limits Indonesia’s effort to protect this natural heritage.
Many advances have been made in key functionality aspects of ‘Digital Earth’. The most prominent advance is Google Earth’s virtual globe. Google Earth is free, it is fast, it has its own markup language (KML), which allows anyone to display and easily share their own data, and it is by all accounts fun [2].
Sumatranforest.org is an independent website that puts precise maps of tropical deforestation over Sumatra freely at your fingertips using Google Earth and KML. The Maps will unfold onto Google’s digital Earth in full resolution (up to 1:150,000 scale) by simply activating the links in the menu ‘data’. You will obtain a bird’s-eye view of Sumatran forest landscapes, and the threats they are facing inside and outside the protected areas. The maps you are about to see are property of Wildlife Conservation Society-Indonesia Program (WCS-IP), Conservation International (CI), and Indonesian Ministry of Forestry’s Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation (PHKA), but these organizations have made these data freely available to anyone, electronically to improve environmental governance in Indonesia [7].
Now, is the time to present this information onto Google Earth’s virtual globe to support the Indonesian government in its mission to inform the general public and decision makers about the true scale of environmental destruction is this part of the World.