Computer scientists launch beta version of new system to track global land change
Contacts:
Rhonda Zurn, College of Science and Engineering, rzurn@umn.edu, (612) 626-7959
University researchers are part of international team studying global climate change
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (12/07/2010) —The Planetary Skin Institute, which includes computer scientists from the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering, unveiled the beta version of its Tropical Forest ALERTS 1.0 platform for monitoring global land change.
The announcement occurred at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico. This is Planetary Skin Institute’s first in a series of global public good platforms planned for release.
Global land use change and deforestation are major issues at the climate negotiations because deforestation and degradation is responsible for up to 15 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. However, while governments are trying to develop policies and incentives to stop deforestation, many countries lack monitoring systems to track deforestation, degradation and other forms of land use change.
ALERTS stands for the Automated Land change Evaluation, Reporting and Tracking System. It is an online cloud-based platform for near real-time global land change detection, and is available at no cost as a global public good to members of the public at www.ourplanetaryskin.org. Targeted at national land use managers, conservation organizations, forest policymakers and scientific communities, it provides timely detection of land change events on a global basis as recently as eight weeks after they occur with a high degree of accuracy.
The ALERTS platform provides visualization, layering, and customization tools for identifying and characterizing land use change. Users can view changes in space and time on the ALERTS geospatial platform, and subscribe to personalized alerts that will notify them via email whenever land use changes are detected in geographical areas of interest. They can also use the ALERTS platform to view land use changes alongside other important environmental and geographical data, such as precipitation, boundaries of protected areas, and levels of deforestation risk.
“We realized that we could help make progress on this important environmental challenge by using new tools and approaches that many in the environmental community have not yet encountered,” said University of Minnesota computer science professor Vipin Kumar. “Advances in data mining and other computer science disciplines are making possible revolutionary advances in environmental understanding. This platform is only the beginning that we have in mind as part of our partnership with the Planetary Skin Institute.”
The Government of Peru has stepped forward as an early adopter of Tropical Forest ALERTS 1.0 to provide near real time monitoring of 54 million hectares of forests as part of the President of Peru’s commitment to the UN General Assembly in September 2010. Peru’s Ministry of Environment, or MINAM, has partnered with the Planetary Skin Institute and other leading international institutions to co-develop important scientific and technical capabilities complementing and augmenting the capabilities of their own world-class Geoservidor program.
The ALERTS platform represents the product of an intensive multi-year collaboration across nations, across organizations/ sectors, and across disciplines. Research and Development partners include Planetary Skin Institute world-class partners NASA, the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE) Centre of Earth Systems Research, the University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Peru’s Ministry of Environment (MINAM), the Terrestrial Carbon Group and Cisco Systems.
For more information on Planetary Skin Institute and its work, visit www.planetaryskin.org.