High resolution map shows extent of forest loss

Posted on November 15, 2013 by guyanaconservationnetwork

The highest resolution forest loss map to date is today published in the journal Science. The global map includes deforestation across the world including Guyana since 2000, at a resolution of 30m. The collaboration between the University of Maryland, NASA and Google Inc is the first of its kind, and the data will be freely available from January 2014.

See the interactive map here: http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest

Source: Hansen, M.C., Potapov, P.V., Moore, R., Hancher, M., Turubanova, S.A., Tyukavina, A., Thau, D., Stehman, S.V., Goetz, S.J., Loveland, T.R., Kommareddy, A., Egorov, A., Chini, L., Justice, C.O. & Townshend, J.R.G. (2013) High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. Science, 342, 850-853.

Seeing the forest and the trees

Posted on October 9, 2013 by guyanaconservationnetwork

How to balance logging, biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

The November 2013 issue of Discover Magazine features PhD student Jake Bicknell who has been working in the Iwokrama Forest on the impacts of forestry using reduced-impact logging.

Download the article (12mb)

Read the beginning of the article at the Discover website

New species of Orchid discovered in Guyana

Posted on September 26, 2013 by guyanaconservationnetwork

A new species of orchid has been discovered in the Pakaraima Mountains, atop the majestic Kamarau Falls, Kurupung River. The new species named Sobralia pakaraimense was found during field studies by the University of Gdansk in 1992, but has only now been described as a distinct species. Eight species of the genus Sobralia are now known from Guyana.

Understanding primate distributions in Guyana

Posted on September 11, 2013 by guyanaconservationnetwork

A new study published in the scientific journal Biotropica, explains patterns in the spatial distributions of three species of primates in the Rupununi area of Guyana. The study by the Project Fauna team is based on three years of field surveys by local communities, and shows that competition between species is fundamental to species distributions, as well as habitat and fruit availability.