{"id":40567,"date":"2014-02-23T15:41:11","date_gmt":"2014-02-23T20:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=39345"},"modified":"2014-02-23T15:41:11","modified_gmt":"2014-02-23T20:41:11","slug":"deforestation-in-real-time-new-online-tool-from-google-lets-you-see-deforestation-as-it-occurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/deforestation-in-real-time-new-online-tool-from-google-lets-you-see-deforestation-as-it-occurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Deforestation In Real-Time — New Online Tool From Google Lets You See Deforestation As It Occurs"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want to get a sense of just how rapidly the world is being deforested, and words aren’t enough for you, well, now there’s a new online tool that can help you with that.<\/p>\n

The Global Forest Watch — backed by Google and more than 40 other business and conservation groups — is a new global monitoring system capable of providing “near real time” data on deforestation occurring around the world.<\/p>\n

\"Deforestation<\/a><\/p>\n

The Global Forest Watch<\/a> works by utilizing the information provided by “hundreds of millions of satellite images” in conjunction with data from the ground. Google’s backing of the project is down to it’s desire to demonstrate “that their products are sustainable,” according to BBC<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite the growing level of public awareness of deforestation, and its causes and effects<\/a>, over the past decade, rates haven’t slowed. The money thrown at the problem hasn’t addressed any of the fundamental causes. According to Google and the University of Maryland the world lost about 230 million hectares of forest between the years of 2000 and 2012.<\/p>\n

For some perspective, that’s the “equivalent of 50 football fields of trees being cut down, every minute, of every day, over the past 12 years.”<\/p>\n