Seeing the volume of logs bobbing along the Fraser River in Vancouver, it should not have been a surprise to find such swiss cheese expanses in BC’s woodlands. However, I was taken aback by the scale of nibbles those mice loggers have taken around, for example, Golden, BC. Canada’s westernmost province is roughly four times the size of the United Kingdom, with forests covering approximately two-thirds; that’s big lumber business. One might not worry about a few holes in the 59 million hectares of forest, but on top of fires and commercial harvesting currently averaging around 200,000 ha a year, the province lost almost 9 million hectares of trees to mountain pine beetle in 2005.
When earth observation satellites provide imagery of natural and man-made disasters, the extent of damage can be quickly monitored, and automatic algorithms can detect and measure the size of any type of ground cover. This enables planning to have accurate inputs, allowing forecasts to be regularly updated without having to send out armies of people to look at every field and plot of woodland.
When the conflict in Darfur first hit the headlines, the UN found that the only maps of this vast area (think Texas size) were a few sketches made by World-War 2 German bomber pilots. A small satellite with a wide-angle camera quickly imaged the region, allowing a map with information about vegetation (cooking firewood!) water, and other information to be made.
Tags: Darfur maps, deforestation, earth observation, pine beetle
