Ðóññêèé
About us|Sitemap|
Search
Transparent World > About us > About Transparent World

About Transparent World

Transparent World is a non-profit organization specialized for environmental applications of remote sensing and GIS technologies. We are working for promoting wider using the geospatial tools for biodiversity conservation, protecting natural landscapes and ecosystems, as well as for better access of civil society for remote sensing data and technologies. Our main focuses include:

·         identification and mapping forests and other ecosystems of high conservation value, including both, remote sensing / map analysis and field surveys;

·         mapping forest resources and estimating the level for sustainable forest harvesting;

·         spotting and monitoring various threats for biodiversity, including logging, mining, and construction, mapping human impact on natural ecosystems; detecting potentially illegal activities;

·         supporting protected areas, keeping the PA boundaries database, monitoring threats, studying biodiversity and designing new PAs;

·         supporting environmental NGOs, as well as governmental environmental agencies in using remote sensing data and other geospatial technologies in their work, education program for activists, students, and schools.

Transparent World works with environmental projects since its foundation in the year 2000. We have been among key mappers of Intact Forest Landscapes (http://intactforests.org/) and other high conservation value forests in Russia, Canada, Nordic countries, Romania, China, South-Eastern Asia, and Australia; and have been active partners of the Global Forest Watch initiative (http://www.wri.org/our-work/project/global-forest-watch) since its very beginning.

Transparent World worked for illegal logging monitoring since 2006 in partnership with WWF (in the Russian Far East), Greenpeace (in western Russia and in Papua New Guinea), World Resources Institute, and a number of local NGOs and protected areas. For the last three years we were involved in monitoring deforestation and detailed mapping of intact forests in Madagascar (Manondroala Project – http://www.sll.fi/mita-me-teemme/kansainvalinen/madagaskar/in-english), where we use the high-resolution satellite imagery for mapping forests by their intactness/disturbance level.

TW experiences in tropical forests also include forest and tree plantation mapping and change detection in Indonesia, as well as the current project in Malaysia, Columbia, and Liberia. The ambition of the project is to map tree plantations worldwide to complement the world map of intact forest landscapes we worked previously for and to be a basis for global forest monitoring.

In a partnership with Scanex R&D Center (the leading Russian remote sensing private company) and DigitalGlobe Inc. (one of the world leading remote sensing satellite operators) Transparent World recently launched the worldwide initiative called Open Landscape Partnership Platform (http://openlandscape.info/), which is aiming at expanding competent demand for affordable open access to very high spatial resolution satellite data. Over a million square kilometers of satellite data will be provided for online access for critical landscapes and conservation hotspots worldwide. TW will have access to all these images and participate in particular mapping projects by requests from local partners.

The core of the TW team consists of the experts with background in biology, geography, and forestry, with extensive experiences in forest and forestry, biodiversity conservation and mapping, field trips and field research.