DeforestAction Earthwatchers

By Lira Low Roberts

 For Qi 2011 speaker Cathy Henkel's upcoming movie 100 Days in the Jungle: Project Borneo 3D, she and her team will be launching a brand new satellite software tool in Brisbane, Australia next week on Wednesday, 27 July 2011. 

Unprecedented in its endeavour, school students all over the world will be able to access satellite monitoring technology and play a leading role in halting a major global crisis - deforestation. This groundbreaking new software tool called EarthWatchers was created by GEODAN, a Dutch geo-information company, and will be launched by DeforestACTION.org to enable young people across the globe to monitor the Indonesian forests using hi-tech satellite images. By creating a mission force of millions of 'agents' working around the clock to monitor 1 sq. km. plots of rainforest for signs of illegal logging, burning, and other acts of deforestation, DeforestACTION will be empowered to provide usable real-time intelligence to the local authorities in order to take action and halt the destruction. This initiative has received the support of the local authorities who are keen to eradicate illegal deforestation but have lacked the extensive resources to do so effectively. By alerting the authorities about forest disturbances, they will be able to send teams directly to the patch of forest in order to confiscate the logging equipment and save any orangutans who had lost their habitat. 

Acclaimed Indonesian scientist Dr. Willie Smits ('Thinkers of the Jungle') and Dr. Eduardo Dias, Research Director from GEODAN will be in Brisbane, Australia next week to officially launch the satellite-monitoring project and demonstrate how it will be implemented as part of DeforestACTION.

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