University of Maryland
Indonesia’s Deforestation Dropped 60 Percent in 2017
In the midst of the second-worst year for tropical tree cover loss in 2017, Indonesia saw an encouraging sign: a 60 percent drop in tree cover loss in primary forests compared with 2016. That’s the difference in carbon dioxide emissions…
World’s Largest Desert Growing Even Larger, Partly Due to Climate Change
The Sahara Desert—which takes up about 3.6 million square miles of northern Africa—is growing ever larger, signaling daunting news for people living in the Sahel border region who stand to lose valuable arable land to the expanding desert. The boundaries…
Record Loss Of Global Tree Cover In 2016, Driven By Forest Fires
The record loss of global tree cover in 2016 — totaling around 297,000 square kilometers (114,672 square miles) and representing a rise of 51% on 2015 — was driven partly by increasingly common wildfires driven by rising temperatures and drought,…
NASA Satellite Reveals How Much Saharan Dust Feeds Amazon’s Plants
What connects Earth’s largest, hottest desert to its largest tropical rain forest? The Sahara Desert is a near-uninterrupted brown band of sand and scrub across the northern third of Africa. The Amazon rain forest is a dense green mass of…