What's Up With Your Acre of the Amazon?

If you're concerned about global warming, chances are you've donated money toward protection of selected areas of rain forest. By protecting the trees, you're making a contribution toward the future of the planet. It's quick, it's easy, and, at least in theory, it's effective.

You may feel great about your little patch of rain forest. But how do you know your acre of Amazonia is really still standing?

It's not easy to find out what's really going on in the rain forest. If you made your donation in Indiana, there's no good way to monitor the state of the trees in central Indonesia. At least, there wasn't until now.

This week, NASA, along with the European Space Agency and national space agencies of Japan, Germany, Italy, India and Brazil, agreed to work together on a forest-mapping project. Google will also have a part in the project. Satellite images will allow the collaborative group to compare and contrast images of forestlands, thus effectively monitoring their condition.

In addition to simply noting whether trees are or aren't where they're supposed to be, the mapping project is set to actually value the carbon locked up in the trees. That's important because trees actually collect carbon as they grow — but release it when they die. Cutting rain forests releases a huge amount of carbon, while maintaining the trees could be worth a good deal of money in carbon exchange.

Jose Achache is director of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the organization that's managing the collaboration. Cited in a Reuters article in NewsDaily, he said: "Investors will want some kind of guarantee that when they are putting money into forests that the forests ... will remain there and remain in good condition."

Photo courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center