Watch Trees Die in Near Real Time

A new interactive map called Global Forest Watch lets you track deforestation in near real time, from the comfort of your laptop. It’s an initiative to get information out into the open and help cut down the time it takes to find out about illegal or harmful activities before whole forests get decimated.

When you access the map (after agreeing to a host of terms, conditions, and disclaimers), you can play around with the toggles according to the area, time-frame and details you’re most interested in. Forest loss is represented in pink, and gain in blue. Within the broad time frame of 2000-2013, the overlying trend is obvious: there’s a lot of pink on that map.

In a video introducing the initiative, Nigel Sizer of the World Resources Institute explains that 13 million hectares of forest are lost every year—an area equivalent to the size of England. And we’re losing trees faster than we can replace them.

We’d usually only find out about particularly problematic events only long after they’d happened. “By the time we find out about forest loss, cattle are already grazing amongst the stumps,” Sizer says. But the interactive map cuts this time to a few days. It uses satellite imagery, combined with crowdsourced information, to keep an updated view on deforestation across the world.

You can zoom into the map and select an area to get more detailed stats. I looked at the whole of the UK and Ireland and found out that 3,521 hectares of forest were lost between 2000 and 2013, and 3,364 hectares gained. Results are apparently most accurate when you zoom in further, so you can look into the rates for individual towns or parks too.

A blog on the Global Forest Watch site explains a few noticeable trends: palm oil development is driving deforestation in Indonesia, and the Congo Basin is under particular threat. Meanwhile, deforestation rates are falling in Brazil—but there’s not much cause for celebration, because its still one of the worst offenders, with lots of pink on the map. It also explains the colour burst around the southern states of the US: here trees are grown as crops for timber, so there’s a lot of tree loss but also a lot of tree growth. The blog doesn’t say as much, but presumably the same reason is behind the rainbow over a defined area of Sweden and Finland, where trees like spruce and pine are forested.

The map is powered by the Google Earth Engine and Google Maps Engine, along with algorithms developed by the University of Maryland. Not-yet-active features promise more details such as information on forest use and conservation efforts, to round off the global picture.

While it’s fun for eco-nerd hobbyists to play around with, it’s also intended as an asset for governments, NGOs, and businesses to monitor what’s going on and protect their various interests. Governments could pick out potentially illegal deforestation, while NGOs could help provide evidence, and businesses could check up on the sustainability of their source products.

A group of large businesses back the map, including Unilever, which has come under pressure for its heavy use of palm oil but has made efforts to use sustainable sources. Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, shared a message of support for the scheme, and pointed out that it’s in businesses’ interests to care about deforestation. “About half of our raw materials come from either farms or forests,” he said, and added, “Traceability is central to ensure that the palm oil we use is produced indeed to the highest standards.”

Now we have a tool to monitor what’s happening on a macro scale, there’s no excuse not to hold businesses and governments to account.