The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Google has announced plans to work together to make high-resolution satellite data a common tool in managing the world’s natural resources.
Under the collaboration, the UN agency said that resource managers and researchers in many countries can gauge changing land uses of individual field-sized plots seen by “eye-in-the-sky” satellites. The initial focus of the collaboration is in the forestry sector. National experts will, after a short training session, use its software and Google’s accessible geospatial data archives to conduct, ‘in a few hours’, mapping and classification exercises that used to take weeks or months.
The project will provide easily accessible and rapidly updated remote sensing data, enabling a shift in forest management from inventory reports to taking near real-time snapshots of forests. This will open up a host of new policy prospects whilst further expanding this tool to a wider forestry audience.
Click here for source (UN News Centre)
Image Credit: FAO/Giulio Napolitano
