This article covers a free online interactive world forest map to track deforestation, climate change, and biodiversity. Deforestation is one of the major issues we are facing. The rate at which it’s happening is very alarming and it has to be controlled ASAP. The best way to analyze how big this threat is to track the deforestation rate and its effects.
GlobalForestWatch.org provides a free set of online tools to watch and track the deforestation, climate changes, and their effects on biodiversity. It has an interactive world forest map where you can track the rate of deforestation all over the world. You can see the satellite imagery of the planet to view the tree gain and loss for any country. Furthermore, you can also analyze factors like climate change, biodiversity, etc, based on a wide data range from most recent to 20 years back. Let’s check it out in details.
Also read: Interactive Bird Migration Map to Track Migratory Birds, Seasons
Interactive World Forest Map to Track Deforestation, Climate, Biodiversity
This interactive global forest map gives you insight into the forest change, land cover, land use, climate change, and biodiversity all over the planet. There are dedicated sections for each of these entities with over 100 data sets. Each of these sections features various data set which you can select and adjust to check the data and impact.
Deforestation
From the Forest Change section, you can map the rate of deforestation on the map. It uses a color code to show the rate of deforestation for a select date range with multiple customization options. It also displays tree cover with canopy density, tree cover for the selected year, tree gain, tree loss, and so on. Here is a list of the data sets which you can visualize on the map:
- GLAD Deforest Alerts (weekly)
- FORMA Deforestation Alerts (monthly)
- FORMA Active Clearing Alerts (daily)
- Terra-i Deforestation Alerts (monthly)
- VIIRS Fire Alerts (daily)
- Tree Cover Gain (12 years)
- Tree Cover Loss (annual)
- Tree Cover Loss by the dominant driver (2001-2015)
This map also has satellite imagery of the earth. You can enable it from the bottom right corner and compare the images of the earth since 2001 to see the impact of deforestation.
When you tap a section on the map, it opens an overlay on the screen where you can customize the selected data sets (legends). Next, to the legends, there is another tab for analysis. Here, you can select any particular country and make an analysis on its deforestation rate, climate factors, biodiversity, land cover, land use, and many other stats. You can also download the data of the analysis.
Climate
The climate section of this map gives you stats about climate change and plot them on the map. Here, you can plot and analyze the followings for any particular country or the planet as a whole:
- Carbon Emissions
- Carbon Density
- Carbon Gains
Biodiversity
The biodiversity section shows global biodiversity and its significance. Here, you can check out the following types of data on the map and interact with it on map:
- Global Biodiversity
- Alliance for Zero Extinction Sites
- Biodiversity Hotspots
- Endemic Bird Areas
- Tiger Conservation Landscapes
Apart from that, you can also explore commodities to view tree cover loss within areas allocated for commodity production and forest change in each major river basin.
Give this interactive world forest map a try here.
Wrap Up
This interactive global forest map packs a lot of datasets which are great for academic use. It shows your data and plots it on the map along with options to customize it for analysis. It’s really handy to analyze the rate and impact of deforestation and climate change and how it’s affecting the planet.
