Protected Area Monitoring

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Archive for category: Protected Area Monitoring

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Protecting Biodiversity and Indigenous Lands from Space

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Illegal mining is devastating parts of the Amazon rainforest. SkyTruth is figuring out how to detect new mining threats and alert conservationists on the ground.

The Amazon rainforest is one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth; a breathtaking riot of life that evolved over eons, encompassing the Amazon River and its vast system of tributaries. Illegal mining in Peru and Brazil is a growing problem, destroying forests and polluting water. SkyTruth is developing a tool to detect illegal mining in the Amazon using radar satellite imagery.

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SkyTruth 2020: What to Expect in the New Year

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Oil pollution at sea, mountaintop mining, Conservation Vision and more on SkyTruth’s agenda.

SkyTruth followers know that we generated a lot of momentum in 2019, laying the groundwork for major impact in 2020. Here’s a quick list of some of our most important projects underway for the new year: stopping oil pollution at sea, protecting wildlife, identifying poorly reclaimed mine sites, characterizing harmful algal blooms from space, and revealing fossil fuel drilling on public lands.

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Christian Thomas Works to Protect his Home State of West Virginia

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Christian had a choice: The Peace Corps or SkyTruth. He chose SkyTruth.

“It was no contest,” Christian Thomas told me when I asked him about choosing between the Peace Corps and SkyTruth. Born and raised near Shepherdstown, West Virginia, Christian first met SkyTruth President John Amos at the Shepherdstown Farmer’s Market when he was a student at West Virginia University. When John learned that Christian was studying geography and environmental geoscience, he encouraged Christian to send his resume to SkyTruth.

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Mining to begin in downsized National Monument

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Late last year, President Trump announced a massive scaling back of the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), part of an even larger reduction of National Monuments in Utah, including nearby Bears Ears. Now a Canadian firm has announced plans to reopen a closed mine1 within the former boundaries of the old Grand Staircase-Escalante […]

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Lease Sale Cancellation near Chaco Culture National Historical Park

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Conservation victories are often measured in terms of what did not happen. We measure them in terms of species that did not go extinct, of land clearing that did not take place, of anti-environmental legislation that did not become law. This is another of those oblique victory stories about something that did not happen. If […]

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