To accompany the CoRE stack innovation challenge, we have developed an app on Google Earth Engine which combines news articles on protected areas put together in the Protected Areas Database created by the Environment and Ecology Research Group (EERG) at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (C-TARA), IIT Bombay, with data on tree cover loss/gain, and canopy density and tree height degradation/improvement created by research scholars at IIT Delhi.
Check out the GEE app.
Almost 600 protected areas have been mapped. You can zoom into specific areas to observe tree cover changes and obtain corresponding statistics, as well as news articles pertaining to the protected area.
Satkosia Wildlife Sanctuary has seen clear declines according to this data.
Palamau Tiger Reserve has improved.
There is data on almost 600 protected areas across India.
But this is just the start. So much more can be done. Additional ecological sustainability metrics like fragmentation, water availability, and land-use changes can be added. Interesting research can be done by analysing the text of the news articles. State-wise or agro-ecological zone-wise or analysis by type of protected area can reveal interesting trends. And most importantly, biodiversity information can be added by pulling in data from citizen science platforms like eBird and iNaturalist. Participate in the challenge and help build these out!
Code for the GEE app is here.
- The compute.js script pulls data from the tree change layers publicly available on the CoRE stack GEE app and computes stats on the protected area polygons shared by the IIT Bombay team who have put together the Protected Areas Database for India.
- The script produces GEE assets in chunks which need to be combined together. The join.js script does that. 4 boundaries had errors and which have been skipped. Somebody can go deeper and fix these and do better error handling!
- Finally, the display.js script renders the GEE app.
For more discussions, please join the Googlegroup and Discord channel, and participate in weekly community calls on Fridays 3-4pm IST.
