Global Forest Map Created by Citizen Scientists to Reveal the Extent of Trees

Scientists aren't the only ones making new discoveries and new tools. It turns out that citizen scientists have helped map the global forests, giving the world more accurate information about forest spread and even whether or not conservation efforts are succeeding.

There are many existing sources of data about forests, including satellite imagery. However, there is broad disagreement between these sources of data. Knowing the location and extent of forests is vital information for ecology, climate change and economic modelling, as well as for researchers looking for the best reference information to estimate deforestation and forest degradation.

"The new maps rely on a combination of recent multisensory remote sensing data, statistics and crowdsourcing," said Dmitry Schepaschenko, the lead author of the new study concerning the map, in a news release. "By combining different data sources, and incorporating the input of trained citizen scientists, we were able to produce new maps that are more accurate than any existing data source."

The researchers created two global forests maps, both at a 1-kilometer resolution, which are a good compromise between the level of detail and global coverage. The first is a "best-guess" map, which uses eight different data sources and relied on citizen scientists to check or validate the classification of land cover by looking at high-resolution satellite imagery. The second map was further calibrated using regional and country-level forest statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The findings are important for policymakers and for future research. They also show how crowdsourcing can be a major tool for scientists.

You can find the makes for yourself freely available online on the Geo-Wiki page.

The findings are published in the journal Remote Sensing of the Environment.

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