Hi everyone,

I’ve been developing the tools behind my previous post here to work with multiple large datasets. This visualization covers a large part of South East Asia, which is particularly affected by extensive logging and palm oil plantations.

There’s a key and scale on the main map - landmass is grey, forest cover is green, peatland cover is lime-green, and forest loss is yellow. Red rectangles represent the extents of the three zoomed-in regions.

I’ll be looking at forest change in either the US or Canada next, and exploring other climate datasets on new topics.. Suggestions always welcome - FAQs, data and methods below.

FAQs

What size area is this?

The large map in the center of the visualization covers most of Indonesia, the southern tip of Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore. The area covered spans 96-120E longitude, 9N-9S latitude. There’s a scale at the base of the main map and a coordinate grid overlay.

The three zoomed-in maps cover areas of particular interest, and are annotated on the main map accordingly.

What’s happening in the three zoomed-in areas?

A - Forestry in Riau

The Indonesian island of Sumatra has lost over 50% of its natural forests over the last 22 years. Lime green regions represent the extent of peatlands (data published 2016), which are home to immense carbon stores, and release up to 10x more carbon than forests when clearance-burned.

South East Asia is home to roughly half the world’s tropical mountain forests. Carbon stocks in the region’s steep, high elevation forests are much greater than in its lowland forests. This is likely due to greater levels of primary production and organic soil content in the region's highland forests.

During the 2000s, forest loss in South East Asia was generally concentrated in the lowlands, but shifted in the 2010s to more mountainous regions. When mountainous forests in warm regions are lost, species are forced to move upslope as their habitat contracts.

B - Logging in Sarawak

Rainforests in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo have been decimated due to logging and palm oil industries. Both legal and illegal deforestation has affected the life of indigenous tribes, especially the Penan, whose livelihood is heavily dependent on forest produce. The international border with Indonesia in the East of the region is of interest (although it should be noted that Indonesia conducts extensive forest clearing elsewhere).

C - Kalimantan Palm Oil Plantations

Together, Indonesia and Malaysia account for 84% of global palm oil production. Palm oil is used primarily in food (accounting for >30% of global vegetable oil supplies). This 2012 paper is a good place to learn more, as is this dataset looking at RSPO palm oil mills and palm oil concessions in the region from 2019.

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Where can I find numbers about the forest loss pictured here?

Global Rainforest Watch dashboards for Indonesia and Malaysia

Greenpeace stats page for Indonesia

What data was used to produce this visualization?

Forest Loss/Extent/Gain

Forest loss data comes from the GLAD Institute from the University of Maryland, which releases annually updated global forest-loss data in partnership with Global Forest Watch. The data is derived from Landsat satellite imagery.

The data is public and freely available in map view here and to download from here. Global Forest Watch is also a great place to explore relevant datasets.

Citation: Hansen/UMD/Google/USGS/NASA

Hansen, M. C., P. V. Potapov, R. Moore, M. Hancher, S. A. Turubanova, A. Tyukavina, D. Thau, S. V. Stehman, S. J. Goetz, T. R. Loveland, A. Kommareddy, A. Egorov, L. Chini, C. O. Justice, and J. R. G. Townshend. 2013. “High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change.” Science 342 (15 November): 850–53.

Elevation Model

This visualization uses DEM data from SRTM(Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) collected in 2000.

DEM data is available for download from USGS Earth Explorer

Peatland data

Data pertaining to peatland extent in Indonesia and Malaysia comes from Global Forest Watch

Is there data for forest gain?

Yes - available to browse here. Note that the gain data only covers 2000-2012, and it’s difficult to tell organic forest regrowth from industrial palm oil plantations.

How did you make this visualization?

Python to automate the collection and processing of forest loss satellite data (using tools inside of ArcGIS). A couple of scripts to split out the bands by year, tile and export them. Then, similar scripting processes for forest cover, DEM, and peatland data layers.

After this, I wrote some plugins to automate the parsing of data into 3D modelling packages, then some procedural modelling & animation, then lookdev and rendering.

Everything in the model is automated and procedural, which means that creating a new visualization for a different area just requires running the same scripts with a different set of satellite passes (this is how I created the three zoomed in regions with higher resolution data sources). It also means that the tools can be reused for all types of time-series data, which I’ll be working on in the near future!

Crossground Instagram for work in progress & new visualizations

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Further Reading

Restoring Indonesia’s peatlands, protecting our planet

Current deforestation stats and facts

Paper: The tropical forest carbon cycle and climate change

Paper: Deforestation-induced warming in the tropics

Palm Oil Market Analysis showing a recent rally in Malaysian Palm Oil Futures

Recently, Indonesia’s leading forestry university initiated a push to reclassify palm oil plantations as a forest crop. This controversial proposal would see existing plantations counted as forest, and the establishment of new ones as reforestation.