Monitoring a protected area.

Due to the incredible amount of data available in the internet, anyone can monitor protected areas around the globe. For journalists, looking closer to what is happening in parks and other kind of reserves can just give a lot of material for good stories. If you read the previous post, on “Tracking Forest Fires”, you saw how simple is to download updated fire pixels into Google Earth.

Now once you just have the firepixels on your computer, you can cross this information with the limits of national park for example. The best way of doing it is to go the World Database on Protected Areas. Overthere you go to the Advance Search Area and then just look for you country. After is just to search in one of the countries protected areas categories and finally they will open a page with the parks names. Once you click in one of their names you get a lot of good information. But the main thing is to download the Google Earth -KML file with the shape of the area. And well, one click is everything done. I used this resource a lot to illustred our O Eco Monitor on Fires at the Protected Areas (in Brazil).

I get pictures like this one, from the Bom Futuro National Forest. This is how it look like on last august.