In British Columbia’s Coast Mountains, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) inland from the Pacific Ocean, rivers and lakes cut tortuous paths through rugged terrain. The peaks and valleys in this region are covered with forest, but the forest has changed over the years due to human use and insect pests, in particular, the mountain pine beetle.
To celebrate Earth Day, Earth Observatory released a series of five puzzlers. Except for Thetford forest, all showed landscapes relatively untouched by human society.
The opening of the Landsat data archive and a partnership with Google has allowed researchers to track the fine details of forest change around the world.
In recent decades, industrial logging has intensified in the dense tropical forests of central Africa, but few data sets exist that can help ecologists and policymakers monitor the occurrence and impact of logging over wide areas in that part of the world.
From the Pacific Northwest—home of the towering redwoods&mdash to the Southern Appalachians, this map shows forest canopy heights across the United States.