DRC: Mapping a changing landscape

"Our small Cessna Caravan plane flew for two hours north of the capital Kinshasa towards the Equateur Province where our Congo Heartland is located," wrote AWF President Patrick Bergin on a recent trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa. "Below us were seemingly endless dense tropical forests with scattered broad sleepy water-ways winding through the trees on their way to join the mighty Congo River. Occasionally the green canopy would be disturbed by a small clearing of felled trees and smoke where a farmer had decided to strike out on his own and hunt forest animals while growing a bit of maize on the limited fertility of forest soils." Using the latest technology, NASA, University of Maryland and USAID are assisting the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) to monitor these new clearings by overlaying satellite images of the forest canopy and of large fires detected from space on a map of the Congo Heartland.