You might think that renewable energy developers have few problems convincing towns to let them move in. But things can get surprisingly tricky when it comes to wildlife protection, according to a new map from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Audubon Society. The Google Maps mash-up shows which renewable energy project locations are likely to provoke a fight based on the location of wilderness areas, areas where roads are banned, national parks, wildlife refuges, areas under consideration for wilderness protection, and areas that lack legal protection but contain endangered species.
The common toad is becoming much less common in England due to a sharp increase in traffic- and road-related deaths, but with the help of Google Earth, some conservationists hope to reverse the trend.
Froglife, an amphibian conservation group, has mapped 700 crossings throughout the United Kingdom with a tweaked Google Earth application. The data returns live results on toad fatalities and crossings so that the group can notify the public of areas where the animals tend to cross.
While deforestation is clearly visible from satellite imagery, selective logging of rainforests is much harder to track. A team of some of the best scientists across the world have developed estimates of the severity of human logging in tropical regions, but say they really have no idea how accurate they are.
At today’s symposium “Will the Rainforests Survive? New Threats and Realities in the Tropical Extinction Crisis” at the Smithsonian Institution, Gregory Asner from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology explained the results of an extensive study on the extent of rainforest destruction worldwide.
Geared towards raising awareness of endangered ocean habitats, a new online tool allows viewers an in-depth peek at underwater reefs around the world.
Google Earth has taken us up and out into the universe, and now they are taking us down and under the surface of the sea. The new Google Earth ‘layer’ will allow people to experience a ‘virtual dive’ under the water at sensitive ocean areas all around the world.
With a click of the mouse, viewers will be able to access video streams, photo galleries, conservation strategies and local stories specific to that spot. Conservationists working in partnership with Google Inc. unveiled the new technology at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) world congress in Barcelona.
It seems as though right now the underwater Google plugin is only available for Windows, but I imagine a Mac version won’t be far behind.
‘Intelligent’ elephants in Africa are getting tech-savvy and are using cellphone text messages to report their own encroachment on farms in a novel experiment local conservationists believe will help avoid human-wildlife conflict.
Rangers at a wildlife conservancy in Kenya are getting accustomed to blips on their phones each time an elephant attempts to cross a virtual ‘fence’ that triggers an automatic text signal using Google Earth software.
AP reports that SIM cards on elephants’ global positioning system (GPS) collars beam messages to rangers on duty whenever they approach the “geo-fence” that mirrors the 90,000 acre Ol Pejeta Conservatory’s boundaries. The rangers then use spotlights to frighten the elephants back inside the protected area.
The Environmental Protection Agency has released an interactive Google Earth-based database which pinpoints energy development opportunities on contaminated properties.
According to Biofuels Digest, the EPA’s site shows opportunities for solar, wind and biomass benefits, by combining Google Earth visuals with the database list of places that show promise for progress.
The “Renewable Energy on Contaminated Land and Mining Sites” Web page gives interested parties tools to see what’s possible and where. For example, someone interested in building a community wind farm might want to view the “EPA Tracked Sites with Community Wind Energy Generation Potential” map.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a Google Earth-based interactive website that pinpoints opportunities for solar, wind or biomass siting on contaminated properties. The site combines the Google Earth platform with an EPA database that lists each property’s attributes for renewable energy development.
According to the EPA, many lands tracked by the agency, such as large Superfund sites, and mining sites offer thousands of acres of land, and may be situated in areas where the presence of wind and solar structures are less likely to be met with aesthetic, and therefore political, opposition.
This week from our friends at ZapRoot: The FDA needs to have their heads examined. We respond to the numerous Chinese comments. Explore the world through Google Earth’s Environment section.
The top 10 headlines in international environmental news for the week of March 24 - 30.
1. World — Earth Hour 2008
As the clock struck eight in the evening, people across each time zone turned off their lights on March 29. It’s activism en mass and it’s called Earth Hour. The purpose: to inspire people to take action on climate change and to demonstrate that massive and immediate action is possible.
Earth Hour began as a city-wide voluntary blackout in Sydney, Australia, in 2007. This year, they’ve moved the date ahead two days and invited the world to join in. Even Google’s joined in. People from roughly 35 countries participated in this global event, which has become a yearly call to action. Read more: EcoWorldy, CNN.
2. Asia — Japanese Man Crosses Pacific with Wave-Powered Boat
A Japanese man named Kenichi Horie is attempting to be environmentally friendly by boating across the Pacific without sails and without fossil fuels.
How does he do it? With a wave-powered boat. Wave power has been discussed quite a bit recently, with a lot of applications including traditional grid energy generation. However, Kenichi is taking things to the next level by powering his ocean going vehicle with the very thing it bobs atop. Read more: Gas 2.0.
This is another of our Guest Posts through our parent Green Options network. Elizabeth Redmond is a product designer currently based in Chicago. She writes about a range of design issues for Sustainablog.
With the portfolio of commercial and urban green building projects happening across the globe right now, how is it possible to see them all? For those of us who are construction fanatics we like to see them in person but flying to location is definitely not the most or even a sustainable way to do things. Well, as with so most everything these days, there is a solution. To increase our remote access to ongoing and completed green building projects nationwide, Building Green Inc. has teamed up with Google and the Department of Energy to bring us an interactive way to view these projects.
The information is presented in Google Earth (must be downloaded) through a layer called the High Performance Building Layer, which is something that you have to download as well. Once you have both of them, you can choose from the 96 different projects they have highlighted thus far through the collaboration. Most of the projects selected reside in the United States, but there are a couple others around the globe. The models are created in Sketch-up and are completed with a full project description. Each building in the High Performance Building Layer also provides links to detailed case studies on the buildings performance. These studies are located on the web through different databases- AIA, USGBC, Building Green…
With the portfolio of commercial and urban green building projects happening across the globe right now, how is it possible to see them all? For those of us who are construction fanatics we like to see them in person but flying to location is definitely not the most or even a sustainable way to do things. Well, as with so most everything these days, there is a solution. To increase our remote access to ongoing and completed green building projects nationwide, Building Green Inc. has teamed up with Google and the Department of Energy to bring us an interactive way to view these projects.
The information is presented in Google Earth (must be downloaded) through a layer called the High Performance Building Layer, which is something that you have to download as well. Once you have both of them, you can choose from the 96 different projects they have highlighted thus far through the collaboration. Most of the projects selected reside in the United States, but there are a couple others around the globe. The models are created in Sketch-up and are completed with a full project description. Each building in the High Performance Building Layer also provides links to detailed case studies on the buildings performance. These studies are located on the web through different databases- AIA, USGBC, Building Green…
As the clock struck eight in the evening, people across each time zone turned off their lights on March 29. It’s activism en mass and it’s called Earth Hour. The purpose: to inspire people to take action on climate change and to demonstrate that massive and immediate action is possible.
