Science Daily January 4, 2021
Global Land Analysis and Discovery System (GLAD), launched in 2016, delivers alerts created by the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery lab based on high-resolution satellite imaging from NASA’s Landsat Science program. The information is made available to subscribers via the interactive web application, Global Forest Watch. A team of researchers in the US (University of Wisconsin, Oregon State University, World Resources Institute, Washington, University of Maryland) looked at deforestation in 22 nations in the tropics in South America, Africa, and Asia between 2011 and 2018 — the last five years before GLAD and first two years after. It showed that forest loss declined 18% in African nations suggesting that alerts either increased capacity to enforce existing deforestation policy or induced the development of more effective anti-deforestation policies…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Timeline of GLAD rollout and study region. Credit: Nature Climate Change (2021)