New online tool tracks deforestation (countries, states/provinces, municipalities)

Enormous greenhouse gas emissions are generated by deforestation, mostly in tropical countries. It follows that any viable effort to mitigate climate change will have to address tropical forest clearing, and REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) programs are focusing on this problem. However, implementation of many REDD+ programs has been hampered by the lack of timely information on local forest clearing. CGD’s Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA) system has been designed to help fill this information gap.

After three years of development work, we're pleased to announce the first global implementation of FORMA, which tracks monthly tropical forest clearing since December 2005 in 27 countries, their 280 states and provinces, and over 2,900 subprovinces and municipalities. We’ll soon release a companion GIS database that tracks monthly clearing in each square kilometer of tropical forest land in the countries covered by FORMA.
We have posted our first global report, which introduces FORMA and provides summary data and graphics, athttp://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1425835/