ESA IDRISI: Protecting the heart of Borneo

Forest cover loss and forest degradation under Business as Usual scenario 2020, calculated using the IDRISI Land Change Modeller and spatial analysis.

Credits: Hatfield Consultants

In Southeast Asia, the island of Borneo is home to one of the world’s most diverse rainforests, but its natural resources are under threat.

Information from satellites is being used to evaluate the impact of the island’s future development.

The mountainous island is the third largest in the world.

It is an area of exceptional biological diversity and its natural resources have tremendous social and economic value at local, national and global levels.

While still of great importance, these resources have diminished in recent years due to logging, plantation development, mining and forest fires.

“The ecosystems in the heart of Borneo provide many local, regional and global services and benefits,” said Anna van Paddenburg, Sustainable Financing and Policy Strategy Leader for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia.

“The mountainous forests form the headwaters of most of Borneo’s 20 major rivers, providing water for agriculture, human consumption, and industry. 

“The forests provide timber and non-timber forest products, and store huge amounts of carbon.

“The diverse ecosystems support endemic plants and animals, which supports eco-tourism and pharmaceutical research.”

While it is widely recognised that healthy ecosystems provide services that play a critical role in maintaining individual and societal welfare, the benefits that flow from them are not always accounted for in government and private sector decision-making.

In an effort to protect the environment and develop the area in a sustainable way, the Heart of Borneo conservation agreement was initiated by WWF and signed by the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei in 2007.

In December 2010, WWF initiated an assessment of Borneo’s natural capital to quantify and understand the value of ecosystem services and benefits.

ESA provided technical assistance through Hatfield Consultants, a Canadian environmental and geomatics consulting company that has been working in Indonesia for 20 years, and NEO BV, a value-adding data provider.

Read more here

Also visit one amazing individual's conservation efforts, saving gibbons and other endangered species, in neighbouring Indonesia: www.kalaweit.com

Nasa IceSat & Terra: Unique Map Shows Height of Earth's Forests

A group of scientists from Nasa and the University of Maryland have created a unique map that shows the heights of the earth's forests.

The map, an accurate and high-resolution reading, has been created using 2.5 million carefully screened and globally distributed laser pulse measurements sent from space.

The data was collected from the Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) instrument, in 2005, using the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System on Nasa's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (Icesat).

In addition, the researchers also relied on information from Nasa's Terra satellite, Nasa's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and the WorldClim database.

The basic results of the study seem to indicate forests were taller in the tropics and boreal forests, whereas they were shorter in mountainous regions.

According to the scientists, this map will help them understand the role forests play in climate change and how their heights influence wildlife habitats, while also helping them quantify the carbon stored in earth's vegetation.

"Knowing the height of earth's forests is critical to estimating their biomass, or the amount of carbon they contain," said Marc Simard, a researcher from Nasa.

"Our map can be used to improve global efforts to monitor carbon. In addition, forest height is an integral characteristic of earth's habitats, yet is poorly measured globally, so our results will also benefit studies of the varieties of life that are found in particular parts of the forest or habitats," he added.

NASA: Carbon Stored in Earth's Tropical Forests

Benchmark map of carbon stored in Earth’s tropical forests, covering about 2.5 million hectares of forests over more than 75 countries.

The map can assist efforts by countries to produce estimates of carbon emissions by providing relatively fine-scale stocks of carbon and their level of uncertainty.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/Winrock International/Colorado State University/University of Edinburgh/Applied GeoSolutions/University of Leeds/Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux/Wake Forest University/University of Oxford

Smoke Pollution in Singapore from Indonesia illegal de-forestation Fires

A couple relaxes in an infinity pool overlooking the haze-covered skyline in Singapore.

Singapore, blanketed under a smoky haze for days, beseeched neighbouring Indonesia to douse fires lit for illegal clearing of forests that are causing the worst air pollution in the region since 2006.

Malaysia has also blamed poor air quality in some of its southern towns on fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island
Picture: REUTERS

Quick Facts you may not know about the Amazon

Here are some quick facts about the Amazon that you may not know and can amaze your friends with.

• 1.4 billion hectares of forest


• The world's largest river basin and the source of one-fifth of all free-flowing fresh water on Earth


• 60% of the Amazon is in Brazil, in an area larger than western Europe - the rest of the Amazon spans across Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana


• One in ten known species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest
  Threats – Soy plantation expansion, cattle ranching, unsustainable logging, human settlement


• Amazon basin is home to 21 million people of which about 30% live in rural areas and 200,000 are indigenous


• The Amazon covers approximately 50% of Brazil and stores huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Burning of forest, however, has released so much of this greenhouse gas that Brazil is now placed 4th in the world for CO2 emissions

For more information on the de-forestation of the Amazon and surrounding rainforests, click on this link to take you to Flora and Fauna International website