Mongabay

April 29, 2021
Combining data from ground-based techniques and remote monitoring using airborne devices offers new opportunities to monitor nature-based solutions (NbS) to mitigate floods, droughts, heatwaves, landslides, storm surges and coastal erosion, according to a new study.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, NbS are actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing “human well-being and biodiversity benefits.” Since 2008, nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged in the field of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) as a resource and cost-efficient measure to complement the limitations linked with the grey-engineered approach.

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CNN

April 15, 2021
Google Earth users can now see the striking effect of climate change over the past four decades.

Google's latest feature, Timelapse, is an eye opening, technical feat that provides visual evidence of how the Earth has changed due to climate change and human behavior. The tool takes the platform's static imagery and turns it into a dynamic 4D experience, allowing users to click through timelapses that highlight melting ice caps, receding glaciers, massive urban growth and wildfires' impact on agriculture.

Timelapse compiles 24 million satellite photos taken from 1984 to 2020, an effort Google (GOOG) said took two million processing hours across thousands of machines in Google Cloud. For the project, the company worked with NASA, the United States Geological Survey's Landsat program — the world's longest-running Earth observation program — the European Union's Copernicus program and its Sentinel satellites, and Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab, which helped develop the technology behind Timelapse.

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Mongabay

November 27, 2019
Efforts to catalog the fast-declining biodiversity of tropical rainforests just got a $10 million boost via a new competition from XPRIZE, an organization that has more than a dozen competitions on topics ranging from spaceflight to oil cleanup over the past 25 years.

Last week, XPRIZE formally unveiled the $10 million Rainforest XPRIZE to catalyze development of “technology capable of identifying and cataloging rainforest biodiversity” that can underpin the emergence of new bioeconomy based on the value of standing forests as heathy and productive ecosystems.

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