by Bryan Walsh, Time
Now Google is taking its Earth app a step forward. At the U.N. climate summit in Cancun this morning, the company’s philanthropic arm Google.org launched the Google Earth Engine, a new technology platform that will enable global monitoring of change in the planet’s environment. Google has tapped a quarter-century of satellite images provided by Landsat, which includes most of the developing world, along with data including MODIS, a major weather tracking project. As the project’s chief engineer Rebecca Moore told Juliet Elperin of the Washington Post, the Earth Engine provides “a living, breathing model of the earth with all of the data and analysis that’s available.” It’s that last part that’s particularly important. The data Earth Engine will tap isn’t new, but Google will make it far more accessible and far more searchable than it has ever before. That will be a major boon for environmental researchers, for whom data is lifeblood. And it’s particularly important for projects on forestry and on preventing deforestation.
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