Show HN: Forest Watch | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Forest Watch

koenvangilst.nl

72 pointsvnglst19 comments

Keep track of forests in your area by viewing changes in tree cover over time.

I’ve build this as a demo of what you can do with the ArcGIS library and the geo data that is offered by Global Forest Watch and Esri. Don’t forget to click the history button.

Works best on desktop!

The demo is build with React and open source: https://github.com/vnglst/koenvangilst.nl/tree/main/app/(bla...

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Sorry folks, it seems like the Global Forest Watch layer has stopped working. That's the layer in pink that was indicating loss of tree cover. Might be the Hackernews effect.

PSA: Everything currently loads for me, but it takes a long time (up to a few minutes). If you want to check it out, stop moving around and wait a bit.

Getting 404 now

At the end of the year, the EU will require importers of certain commodities (coffee, cocoa, cattle, palm oil, etc) to have evidence the commodity was not grown on deforested land. It's called the EUDR[1], and I don't think a lot of importers are ready for it.

The crux of the issue is each importer requires verifiable satellite evidence. I could see suppliers using this site to generate their compliance statements!

[1]. https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestatio...

That's really cool!

And a great use case for mass-market satellite imagery.

There's no arguing that f.ex. n-2 years ago there was tree cover in imagery of an area, that's now gone.

I'm not familiar with this notation: "f.ex. n-2"?

'Two years ago'

Many eastern EU countries have lax forest protection and EU law classifies wood as biofuel/biomass that is "renewable resource" which makes it profitable to turn old forests into pallets of wood. Hope this is getting fixed someday.

I want to help increase the coverage, what can I do?

Eating less meat (especially beef) is a good start. This is a mayor cause of deforestation in the Amazon. In Papua, Indonesia it’s palm oil.

Buying local meat for those of us outside of the Amazon seems like a viable alternative too

Almost impossible for most people, especially city dwellers.

And even if it is local, the eco footprint is huge (also a big deal for water constrained areas).

mptr.ee

This looks neat!

It seems that the gain/loss layers do render, but it can currently take a very long time. The user doesn't see whether data is still fetching or if there are no changes/data for the displayed region. Perhaps you could reflect this in the UI somehow?

I will make sure to check it out later, once it's no longer being hugged.

I also wanted to ask for a 'go to my location' button, only to find out that it is there in the bottom right corner. Perhaps it would be useful to make it more prominent?

Great feedback, going to take a look thanks!

Thanks for sharing this! Question, I looked thru the code and didnt see the code for actually pulling the historical images, did you do that manually via GFW/Esri?

I was helping with a project for the Audubon Society some years back and we were pulling these images via ESA sweeps, which were all available via AWS (puller pays, which was quite inexpensive). However, it required some complex geometry and post-processing. Did you have to do something similar?

It’s using the Wayback Imagery from ArcGIS. I’m loading the layers based on a list of ids (url in the config).

There’s also some logic involved in making sure the user only sees the layers with new data in it. That’s running on the client and it’s quite heavy.

https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#active=37965&mapCent...

Ah… 404 not found on your github link?

did this get taken down everywhere? sounds really interesting, but everything looks like it's been taken down.

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