PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Subscriptions to satellite alerts linked to decreased deforestation in Africa

Subscriptions to satellite alerts linked to decreased deforestation in Africa
2021-01-04
(Press-News.org) MADISON, Wis. -- Deforestation dropped by 18 percent in two years in African countries where organizations subscribed to receive warnings from a new service using satellites to detect decreases in forest cover in the tropics.

The carbon emissions avoided by reducing deforestation were worth between $149 million and $696 million, based on the ability of lower emissions to reduce the detrimental economic consequences of climate change.

Those findings come from new research into the effect of GLAD, the Global Land Analysis and Discovery system, available on the free and interactive interface Global Forest Watch. Launched in 2016, GLAD provides frequent, high-resolution alerts when it detects a drop in forest cover. Governments and others interested in halting deforestation can subscribe to the alerts on Global Forest Watch and then intervene to limit forest loss.

The research was led by Fanny Moffette, a postdoctoral researcher in applied economics in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Moffette collaborated with Jennifer Alix-Garcia at Oregon State University, Katherine Shea at the World Resources Institute and Amy Pickens at the University of Maryland.

The researchers published their findings Jan. 4 in Nature Climate Change. They studied deforestation in 22 tropical countries across South America, Africa and Asia from 2011 to 2018.

Moffette and her co-authors set out to understand whether these kinds of automated alerts could achieve their goal of reducing forest loss, which has global climate implications. Land-use changes like deforestation account for 6 percent to 17 percent of global carbon emissions. And avoiding deforestation is several times more effective at reducing carbon emissions than regrowing forests.

"The first question was to look at whether there was any impact from having access to this free alert system. Then we were looking at the effect of users subscribing to this data to receive alerts for a specific area," says Moffette.

Simply being covered by GLAD did not help a country combat deforestation. Only those African countries in which organizations had actually subscribed to receive alerts saw a decrease in deforestation. Intuitively, this finding makes sense, says Moffette. Having access to information is good. But what you need to change the course of deforestation are people committed to using that information and acting.

However, deforestation did not decrease in South American or Asian countries, even where organizations subscribed to receive warnings. There are multiple potential causes for this continental discrepancy.

"We think that we see an effect mainly in Africa due to two main reasons," says Moffette. "One is because GLAD added more to efforts in Africa than on other continents, in the sense that there was already some evidence of countries using monitoring systems in countries like Indonesia and Peru. And Colombia and Venezuela, which are a large part of our sample, had significant political unrest during this period."

The GLAD program is still young, and as more governments and organizations sign on to receive warnings, and decide how to intervene at sites of deforestation, the system's influence may grow.

Developed by a team at the University of Maryland that includes one of Moffette's collaborators, GLAD made several improvements over its predecessors. It has very high spatial resolution, roughly 900 square meters, which is orders of magnitude more precise than older tools. And it can provide alerts up to every eight days if the skies are cloud-free when satellites re-image a section of Earth. Users can define custom areas to monitor. They then receive weekly emails, available in six languages, that contain geographic coordinates of the alerts within the monitored areas.

Going forward, the team is looking to evaluate the effect of new features of the monitoring platform, such as data that can inform forest restoration, while supporting efforts of organizations that try to intervene to halt deforestation.

"Now that we know subscribers of alerts can have an effect on deforestation, there's potential ways in which our work can improve the training they receive and support their efforts," says Moffette.

INFORMATION:

--Eric Hamilton, (608) 263-1986, eshamilton@wisc.edu


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Subscriptions to satellite alerts linked to decreased deforestation in Africa

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Using artificial intelligence to find new uses for existing medications

2021-01-04
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scientists have developed a machine-learning method that crunches massive amounts of data to help determine which existing medications could improve outcomes in diseases for which they are not prescribed. The intent of this work is to speed up drug repurposing, which is not a new concept - think Botox injections, first approved to treat crossed eyes and now a migraine treatment and top cosmetic strategy to reduce the appearance of wrinkles. But getting to those new uses typically involves a mix of serendipity and time-consuming and expensive randomized clinical trials to ensure that a drug deemed effective for one disorder will be useful as a treatment for something else. The Ohio State University researchers ...

Brain cancer linked to tissue healing

Brain cancer linked to tissue healing
2021-01-04
The healing process that follows a brain injury could spur tumour growth when new cells generated to replace those lost to the injury are derailed by mutations, Toronto scientists have found. A brain injury can be anything from trauma to infection or stroke. The findings were made by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre who are also on the pan-Canadian Stand Up To Cancer Canada Dream Team that focuses on a common brain cancer known as glioblastoma. "Our data suggest that the right mutational change in particular cells in the brain could be modified by injury to give rise to a tumour," says Dr. Peter Dirks, Dream ...

A high order for a low dimension

A high order for a low dimension
2021-01-04
Spintronics refers to a suite of physical systems which may one day replace many electronic systems. To realize this generational leap, material components that confine electrons in one dimension are highly sought after. For the first time, researchers created such a material in the form of a special bismuth-based crystal known as a high-order topological insulator. To create spintronic devices, new materials need to be designed that take advantage of quantum behaviors not seen in everyday life. You are probably familiar with conductors and insulators, which permit and restrict the flow of electrons, respectively. ...

Largest, most diverse ever study of prostate cancer genetics brings disparities into focus

2021-01-04
Some racial and ethnic groups suffer relatively more often, and fare worse, from common ailments compared to others. Prostate cancer is one disease where such health disparities occur: risk for the disease is about 75 percent higher, and prostate cancer is more than twice as deadly, in Blacks compared to whites. Yet whites are often overrepresented as research participants, making these differences difficult to understand and, ultimately, address. With this problem in mind, scientists at the USC Center for Genetic Epidemiology and the Institute for Cancer Research, London, ...

Scrambled supersolids

Scrambled supersolids
2021-01-04
Last year, more than fifty years after initial theoretical proposals, researchers in Pisa, Stuttgart and Innsbruck independently succeeded for the first time in creating so-called supersolids using ultracold quantum gases of highly magnetic lanthanide atoms. This state of matter is, in a sense, solid and liquid at the same time. "Due to quantum effects, a very cold gas of atoms can spontaneously develop both a crystalline order of a solid crystal and particle flow like a superfluid quantum liquid, i.e. a fluid able to flow without any friction" explains Francesca Ferlaino from the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Experimental Physics at the ...

Elephant ivory continues to be disguised and sold on eBay

2021-01-04
Research from the University of Kent's Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) has found that elephant ivory is still being sold on the online marketplace eBay, despite its 10-year-old policy banning the trade in ivory. The trafficking of wildlife over the internet continues to be a problem, with the detection of illegal activity being challenging. Despite efforts of law enforcement, the demand for illegal wildlife products online has continued to increase. In some cases vendors have adopted the use of 'code words' to disguise the sale of illicit items. Sofia Venturini ...

Research shows a few beneficial organisms could play key role in treating type 2 diabetes

2021-01-04
PORTLAND, Ore. - Researchers at Oregon State University have found that a few organisms in the gut microbiome play a key role in type 2 diabetes, opening the door to possible probiotic treatments for a serious metabolic disease affecting roughly one in 10 Americans. "Type 2 diabetes is in fact a global pandemic and the number of diagnoses is expected to keep rising over the next decade," said study co-leader Andrey Morgun, associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences in the OSU College of Pharmacy. "The so-called 'western diet' - high in saturated fats and refined sugars - is one of the primary factors. But gut bacteria have an important role to play in modulating the effects of diet." Formerly known as adult-onset diabetes, type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition ...

In kefir, microbial teamwork makes the dream work

2021-01-04
To make kefir, it takes a team. A team of microbes. That's the message of new research from EMBL and Cambridge University's Patil group and collaborators, published in Nature Microbiology today. Members of the group study kefir, one of the world's oldest fermented food products and increasingly considered to be a 'superfood' with many purported health benefits, including improved digestion and lower blood pressure and blood glucose levels. After studying 15 kefir samples, the researchers discovered to their surprise that the dominant species of Lactobacillus ...

Alert system shows potential for reducing deforestation, mitigating climate change

2021-01-04
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Forest loss declined 18% in African nations where a new satellite-based program provides free alerts when it detects deforestation activities. A research collaboration that included Jennifer Alix-Garcia of Oregon State University found that the Global Land Analysis and Discovery System, known as GLAD, resulted in carbon sequestration benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars in GLAD's first two years. Findings were published today in Nature Climate Change. The premise of GLAD is simple: Subscribe to the system, launch a free web application, receive email alerts when the GLAD algorithm detects deforestation going on and then take action to save forests. GLAD, launched in 2016, delivers alerts created ...

New data-driven global climate model provides projections for urban environments

New data-driven global climate model provides projections for urban environments
2021-01-04
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Cities only occupy about 3% of the Earth's total land surface, but they bear the burden of the human-perceived effects of global climate change, researchers said. Global climate models are set up for big-picture analysis, leaving urban areas poorly represented. In a new study, researchers take a closer look at how climate change affects cities by using data-driven statistical models combined with traditional process-driven physical climate models. The results of the research led by University of Illinois Urbana Champaign engineer Lei Zhao are published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Home to more than 50% of the world's population, cities experience more heat stress, water scarcity, air pollution ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

‘Molecular shield’ placed in the nose may soon treat common hay fever trigger

Beetles under climate stress lay larger male eggs: Wolbachia infection drives adaptive reproduction strategy in response to rising temperature and CO₂

Groundbreaking quantum study puts wave-particle duality to work

Weekly injection could be life changing for Parkinson’s patients

Toxic metals linked to impaired growth in infants in Guatemala

Being consistently physically active in adulthood linked to 30–40% lower risk of death

Nerve pain drug gabapentin linked to increased dementia, cognitive impairment risks

Children’s social care involvement common to nearly third of UK mums who died during perinatal period

‘Support, not judgement’: Study explores links between children’s social care involvement and maternal deaths

Ethnic minority and poorer children more likely to die in intensive care

Major progress in fertility preservation after treatment for cancer of the lymphatic system

Fewer complications after additional ultrasound in pregnant women who feel less fetal movement

Environmental impact of common pesticides seriously underestimated

The Milky Way could be teeming with more satellite galaxies than previously thought

New study reveals surprising reproductive secrets of a cricket-hunting parasitoid fly

Media Tip Sheet: Symposia at ESA2025

NSF CAREER Award will power UVA engineer’s research to improve drug purification

Tiny parasitoid flies show how early-life competition shapes adult success

New coating for glass promises energy-saving windows

Green spaces boost children’s cognitive skills and strengthen family well-being

Ancient trees dying faster than expected in Eastern Oregon

Study findings help hone precision of proven CVD risk tool

Most patients with advanced melanoma who received pre-surgical immunotherapy remain alive and disease free four years later

Introducing BioEmu: A generative AI Model that enables high-speed and accurate prediction of protein structural ensembles

Replacing mutated microglia with healthy microglia halts progression of genetic neurological disease in mice and humans

New research shows how tropical plants manage rival insect tenants by giving them separate ‘flats’

Condo-style living helps keep the peace inside these ant plants

Climate change action could dramatically limit rising UK heatwave deaths

Annual heat-related deaths projected to increase significantly due to climate and population change

Researchers discover new way cells protect themselves from damage

[Press-News.org] Subscriptions to satellite alerts linked to decreased deforestation in Africa