NASA releases Google Earth version of a map showing the height of the world's forests
Looks like about 200 orangutans were killed. I’ll post more in the am.
Sumatran Orangutan: “It is no longer several years away, but just a few months or even weeks before this iconic creature disappears”
Hundreds of orangutans are believed to have died in fires deliberately lit by palm oil companies in the last few weeks. Conservationists say the rare Sumatran orangutan could now be wiped out within weeks.Read more here.
“Drone” used to detect illegal logging and deforestation. Concept is to make homebrewed monitoring devices for every-day conservation researchers and environmental activists.
Autopilot drone flying a transect
Background: Autopilot drone developed by a team of ecologists and software developers for forest monitoring, real-time land use mapping, and biodiversity conservation. This is part of a series of field tests in a remote forest area in Sumatra, Indonesia. The plane is fully autopilot, except when landing (due to a small landing area).
Autopilot system is based on ArdupilotMega developed by an open-source community at http://diydrones.com.
The plane is a low cost Hobbyking Bixler RC model.
Camera system is a GoPro Hero HD (version 1).
#1: Logging transect, http://youtu.be/IOm9v0Ewcek
#2: Orangutan search, http://youtu.be/hXTbJA-304k
#3: River mission, http://youtu.be/4icq_takJLwH/T Revkin
How fantastic is this? You could do so much with all that data! And the videos are pretty magic as well.
I look forward to seeing the results of real-time monitoring of deforestation.
(via good-conservation-news)
