Global Forest Watch

Global Forest Watch is the definitive public tool for tracking deforestation anywhere on Earth. It combines satellite imagery from Landsat, Sentinel, and other sources into a continuously updated picture of global tree cover change going back to 2001. The platform provides weekly deforestation alerts (GLAD alerts for the tropics, RADD radar-based alerts that see through clouds), country-level dashboards, and over 65 downloadable datasets covering tree cover loss, forest fires, land use, protected areas, and indigenous territories. The platform is built and maintained by the World Resources Institute, a Washington DC-based global research organization founded in 1982. WRI operates with an annual budget exceeding $200 million and employs over 1,800 staff across 12 offices worldwide. Global Forest Watch launched in 2014 as a partnership between WRI, Google (which provides Earth Engine computing infrastructure), the University of Maryland (whose GLAD lab produces the core tree cover loss data), and dozens of other research institutions and government agencies. For journalists, the killer feature is the alert system. GLAD alerts detect tree cover loss in the tropics at roughly 30-meter resolution, published weekly with a few days' lag. RADD alerts use Sentinel-1 radar, which penetrates cloud cover — critical in tropical regions where optical satellites are frequently blocked. When a story breaks about illegal logging in the Amazon, fires in Borneo, or deforestation for palm oil in Central Africa, Global Forest Watch gives you the satellite evidence within days. The data has powered major investigations. Mongabay, Reuters, the Guardian, and Bloomberg have all used GFW data to document deforestation linked to specific companies, concessions, and supply chains. The platform's ability to overlay tree cover loss against concession maps, protected area boundaries, and indigenous territory maps makes it possible to identify precisely who is clearing what land, and whether it violates legal protections. The code is open source (GitHub), the data is freely downloadable, and the methodology (Hansen et al., University of Maryland) is published in peer-reviewed literature. This means every claim is reproducible — you can verify the satellite analysis independently, cite the methodology in your story, and withstand legal challenges from companies disputing your findings. Limits: The platform measures tree cover loss, not specifically deforestation. A tree plantation harvested and replanted registers as loss then gain, same as illegal clearing of primary forest. Context matters — always check the land use layer to distinguish plantation forestry from natural forest destruction. Resolution at 30 meters means individual trees are not tracked; small-scale selective logging may be invisible. The alert systems cover the tropics primarily; temperate and boreal forest monitoring has different tools and timelines.