Teaching Indigenous communities in the Amazon to tap on remote-monitoring technologies in patrolling forests can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found.

Researchers, whose work was published July 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), implemented technology-based forest-monitoring programs in 36 communities in Loreto, the northernmost department of Peru, between 2018 and 2019. They trained and paid three representatives from each community to patrol their forests monthly and verify reports of suspected deforestation using a smartphone application and satellite data.

Compared with 37 other communities in Loreto where the program wasnt implemented, those under the program saw 52% and 21% less deforestation in 2018 and 2019 respectively. The gains were concentrated in communities at highest risk of deforestation due to threats like illegal mining, logging, and the planting of illicit crops such as coca to manufacture cocaine, the researchers found.

The collaboration between Rainforest Foundation US (RFUS), the World Resources Institute (WRI), Indigenous leaders and independent researchers is the latest in a growing body of research that says recognizing and protecting Indigenous rights is the most effective way to preserve natural rainforests. In Latin America, studies have shown Indigenous people to be by far the best guardians of forests in the region, with deforestation rates up to 50% lower in their territories than elsewhere.

One-third of the Amazon Rainforest falls within formally acknowledged Indigenous peoples territories. Community-based forest monitoring programs coupled with enforcement support from local officials could save one-fifth of the 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres) of rainforest in Brazilian and Peruvian Indigenous territories likely to be lost over the next decade, RFUS estimated.

Deforestation alerts from satellite data have long been publicly available. WRIs Global Forest Watch (GFW) tool relies on an algorithm developed by university researchers to detect changes in forest cover through satellite imagery. In Peru, the national Geobosques platform uses GFW data to issue early alerts of suspected deforestation.

However, these alerts rarely filter down to remote rainforest groups lacking reliable internet access, resulting in communities often detecting illegal deforestation activities only when they are well underway and difficult to halt.

The whole point is to put the deforestation information into the hands of those most affected by its consequences and who can take action to stop it, Tom Bewick, who is the Peru country director for RFUS and who was involved in the study, said in a statement.

During the two-year study, researchers hired couriers to traverse the Amazon River and its tributaries every month to deliver USB drives containing Geobosques reports of suspected deforestation to remote communities.

Trained representatives, or monitors, would then upload this information into a specialized smartphone application, which they used to navigate to the locations of forest disturbances during their monthly patrols. Where they identified cases of unauthorized deforestation, monitors would take photos as evidence and flag them to the community, which could then decide to report it to local authorities.

We are helping them set up this system by which they can collect the evidence but our hope is that then we walk away, Suzanne Pelletier, executive director of RFUS, said in a video. They can then train others and be the model for thousands of other communities across the Amazon.

Over the two-year period, communities under the program saved 456 hectares (1,127 acres) of rainforest, preventing the release of more than 234,000 metric tons of carbon emissions at a cost of $5 a ton. This makes it slightly more expensive than the $4.30 a ton average price of nature-based, forest management carbon credits in 2019, according to data from Ecosystem Marketplace.

But while nature-based credits have traditionally been plagued by the problem of leakage where ecosystem conservation projects, even if successful in one area, often shift deforestation to another location the researchers observed no such displacement of deforestation for the communities in their study.

They theorized this could be due to the inaccessibility of the forests in Loreto. In the region that we study, in the general absence of roads, most transportation occurs by boat. As a result, the areas most vulnerable to deforestation are located close to navigable rivers, they wrote in their report. Since Indigenous communities in Loreto also tend to live along the river, community-based forest-monitoring programs increase the cost of resource extraction, they said.

The study provides evidence that supporting our communities with the latest technology and training can help reduce deforestation in our territories, Jorge Perez Rubio, president of the Indigenous group Regional Organizationof thePeople of theEasternAmazon (ORPIO), said in a statement. ORPIO worked with RFUS and WRI to implement the forest-monitoring programs in the study.

Our network is ready to partner with Rainforest Foundation US to apply this technology-enabled model to our community forest protection initiatives basin-wide, Gregorio Mirabal, general coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), said in a statement. COICA, which was not involved in the study, is an umbrella association for Indigenous organizations in the Amazon lowlands, of which ORPIO is a part.

Banner image of Indigenous Kichwa from Pucayayu navigating through rainforest mangroves en route to investigate deforestation alerts by Gilbertano Salazar Mamallacta.

Editors note: This story was supported by XPRIZE Rainforest as part of their five-year competition to enhance understanding of the rainforest ecosystem. In respect to Mongabays policy on editorial independence, XPRIZE Rainforest does not have any right to assign, review, or edit any content published with their support.

Citations:

Slough, T., Kopas, J., & Urpelainen, J. (2021). Satellite-based deforestation alerts with training and incentives for patrolling facilitate community monitoring in the Peruvian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.2015171118

Walker,W.S., Gorelik,S.R., Baccini,A., Aragon-Osejo,J.L., Josse,C., Meyer,C., Schwartzman,S. (2020). The role of forest conversion, degradation, and disturbance in the carbon dynamics of Amazon Indigenous territories and protected areas.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,117(6), 3015-3025. doi:10.1073/pnas.1913321117

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Armed with data and smartphones, Amazon communities boost fight against deforestation - Mongabay.com

U.S. bitcoin mining facility operator Compute North boasts an ambition to scale up its capacity by 1.2 gigawatts over the next 12 months amid a global supply crunch for hosting bitcoin miners.

The Minnesota-headquartered firm now has five sites under construction and are planned to be operational by the end of Q2 in 2022, said Compute North's CEO Dave Perrill in an interview with The Block.

Colocation is where you own mining equipment but pay for a data centre to host the machines for you.

Compute North is already operating three facilities in Texas, Nebraska and South Dakota that claim to have over 100 megawatts capacity in total but Perrill declined to disclose the locations of the five new planned sites.

Perrill said the energy powering the new facilities will be a combination of renewable and fossil fuel sources. "At that scale, it'd be a challenge, if not impossible, to be 100% renewable," he said.

The plan comes at a time when the bitcoin mining market is being flooded with secondhand mining equipment due to China's recent shutdown orders on local bitcoin mining farms. Owners of this equipment are either liquidating the assets or shipping them outside the country to wherever there's vacant hosting capacity given the unlikelihood of the government reversing the policy in the foreseeable future.

"We were receiving requests for 100 megawatts on average over the past several weeks although some of them may be duplicated through brokers," he said.

In early June, even before China's Xinjiang and Sichuan provinces the top two mining hubs at the time handed down the actual shutdown orders, it was reported that the available hosting capacity outside China would be nowhere enough to absorb all the potential demand.

That posed as much a challenge for Chinese bitcoin miners as an opportunity for colocation providers overseas as they turn to regions like Kazahkstan, Russia and North America for their exodus plans. Although those plans could take months, if not years, to complete.

"We may not see the hash rate go back to the all-time-high level until Q2/Q3 next year. That's my hunch," said Perrill, adding that the supply crunch has shifted from machines to hosting capacity.

Compute North isn't the only colocation provider that has upcoming plans to scale up capacity. Russia-based BitRiver said in April that its third data center was expected to be operational in September with another 100 megawatts.

U.S. colocation provider Bit5ive is also set to manage the development of a 100 megawatts facility, according to a recent announcement.

Bitmain previously told The Block that they are sourcing electricity worldwide and encouraging customers and partners to invest in infrastructure rather than just hosting machines. The Chinese mining equipment manufacturer giant said it is looking to co-invest in mining facilities by taking up to 20% stakes.

At the same time, the supply gap remains significant. Roughly 90 million terahashes per second (TH/s) of computing power on the Bitcoin network has gone offline since China's shutdown orders. (See a timeline recapping the events here.)

In Xinjiang alone, those who had been operating before June 9 had a combined capacity of 1.9 gigawatts of energy capacity before they were shut down. More went offline in Sichuan in the weeks afterwards.

Although it's unclear how much energy capacity exactly had powered up the hash rate that went offline in China, a lower and upper bound range can be estimated.

The most advanced and latest generation of mining equipment on the market has an efficiency rate of around 40 watts per TH/s of computing power whereas the least efficient model on the market consumes about 100 watts per TH/s.

That means the 90 million TH/s of computing power could be using an energy capacity in the range of 3.6 to nine gigawatts, with an average around six gigawatts.

The crackdown is not just affecting Chinese mining companies but also those listed in the U.S.

BIT Digital, a Nasdaq-listed bitcoin miner, who is also one existing hosting customer of Compute North, disclosed that it had a total of 43,606 miners with a combined hash rate of 2.4 million TH/s as of April 30 with 80% of them generating revenue from inside China.

It had 19,060 units in Sichuan, 12,830 units in Xinjiang and 3,200 units in Yunnan. At the time, only 7,000 units were being hosted in U.S. facilities.

BIT Digital has not made any public disclosure on what it plans to do with the equipment located in China and has not responded to The Block's request for comment.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong-listed Loto Interactive, owned by the New York Stock Exchange-listed BIT Mining, had all of its three mining facilities in Sichuan shut down last month, which had a capacity of around 400 megawatts and made up almost the entirety of Loto's revenues in 2020.

2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Compute North plans to add 1.2 GW of bitcoin mining colocation capacity - The Block Crypto

Its been nearly nine months since Norways Ministry of Climate and Environment (NICFI) awarded an international contract to KSAT, Planet, and Airbus. Since the launch of the coalition, initiatives across the world have been leveraging Planets high-resolution satellite imagery of the tropics, free of charge, helping to save the worlds tropical forests while simultaneously improving the livelihoods of those who live off of and near the forests.

To achieve the objectives of the NICFI Satellite Data program, the initiative has focused on several tracks: partnerships with the private sector as a means to enable deforestation-free supply chains; large-scale partnerships with key forest countries to demonstrate that action on a national level is attainable, thereby supporting the commitments made in the Paris Agreement; multilateral initiatives to ensure progress towards REDD+ and sustainable land use; and supporting NGOs, research institutions and civil society organizations to further advance scientific research and development and learn through field experiences.

The following collection of stories demonstrates the ways in which NGOs and Governments across the world are making progress towards reducing and reversing tropical forest loss.

The Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) a partnership initiative between a coalition of donors and six partner countries including the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Republic of Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Gabon is now using the Planet-NICFI data to validate and classify drivers of deforestation and degradation to protect the Congo Basin Central African forest. This work is critical to improved land cover mapping, management, and reporting. According to Remi DAnnunzio, REDD+ National Forest Monitoring Coordinator for Africa, UN-FAO, Anywhere in the Central African forest where degradation is happening we were missing a substantial amount of even easy to detect degradation with anything else other than the Planet-NICFI data. In partnership with UN-FAO, CAFI is hosting regular workshops with technical practitioners from the six-member countries and beyond to support their work with the NICFI-Planet data, including helping implement dense time-series approaches to track and classify drivers of deforestation and forest degradation over time.

Colombias Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (IDEAM) has found the NICFI-Planet data helps reduce uncertainty in their forest area change and carbon estimates, validating national land cover maps over the archive and monitoring terms. They expect the Level 2 (Scenes) data to contribute especially to early deforestation warning systems and enforcement of zero-deforestation laws and agreements. In IDEAMs words, Colombias Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, through IDEAM, is using the three levels of access available through the NICFI Data Program Planet Visual and SR Basemaps, as well as Airbus Archive and Planet Scenes. Its objectives are oriented to improve historical and follow-up estimates of changes in the forest area which are oriented to measure among other studies the deforestation of the country; detect and respond more easily to forest fire events; and contribute to the interpretation of changes in land cover among other aspects of the work of monitoring ecosystems.

Lao Peoples Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is working to achieve Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) pledged in its Paris Agreement commitments. They have entered an agreement with the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) to receive performance-based payments for these reduced emissions. A key condition is working to reduce the uncertainty of emission estimates due to forest degradation from selective logging and shifting cultivation. The Collect Earth Online platforms Geo-Dash Degradation Tool has been instrumental to this work. Mr. Khamkhong of the Forest Inventory and Planning Department of Lao PDR said, Collect Earth Online now offers many types of imagery PlanetScope, Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 for various time periods that enable us to understand the historical land cover change accurately.

Another initiative, SERVIR, a joint development project between NASA and the United States Agency for International Development, provides local decision-makers with the tools, training, and services they need to act on climate-sensitive issues. Their Regional Science Coordination teams for West Africa and Amazonia, in particular, have been busy putting the NICFI-Planet data to work for key forest and climate objectives.

Take, for example, SERVIRs ecosystem monitoring projects in Ghana and Peru two regions where forests are threatened from small-scale deforestation and forest degradation associated with artisanal gold mining and selective logging. With the higher spatial and temporal resolution data available through the NICFI Data Program, these projects are now better equipped to detect mining-associated degradation, helping pinpoint illegal operations and target regrowth areas. When speaking about the satellite data, Emil Cherrington, Regional Science Coordination Lead for SERVIR-West Africa and land cover specialist said, Accessing Earth observation data at a finer level of detail and at a higher frequency is already opening up new opportunities for land cover, land use, and ecosystem monitoring services.

This heat map shows the top streamed tile counts across countries with access to high-resolution satellite data through the NICFI Satellite Data Program. Credit: KSAT

As governments from around the world are making an impact in reducing tropic forest loss, NGOs and educational institutions are also finding success in their initiatives.

For example, the Conflict and Environment Observatory is using Planet-NICFI Data to assess the current state of forest loss in conflict areas. Their work found that forest loss increased by 10% in 2020 in areas of active conflict which equates to approximately 1.1 megatonnes of CO2.

Haka Indonesia is leveraging the data to validate deforestation alerts; calculate forest area change; pinpoint law enforcement resources for acts of illegal deforestation, and prioritize conservation and restoration activities

As one Haka Indonesia team member shared, We use the Planet satellite imagery to validate alerts. It is important in law enforcement activity, and also very useful in helping us prioritize our work where to protect, where to target regrowth.

Concurrently, Amazonica Por la Amazonia is applying the data to validate deforestation and to enforce on forestry crimes in the San Martin region of southern Peru while the Center for Global Change and Sustainability in Mexico is using Planet-NICFI data in the Usumacinta River basin between Guatemala and Mexico to estimate forest area change from deforestation and degradation, as well as other land cover changes.

Further applications of this data have been used by Miami University to train local governments and NGOs in the tropics to detect wildfires, map human-caused fires, and make policies to manage. One of the best things about the Planet-NICFI data is that it is already orthorectified and georeferenced .. The mosaics are really helpful in communicating change, particularly in cloudy areas, shared a representative at Miami University.

Conservacin Amaznica (ACCA) integrates science, innovation and communities to conserve the Andean Amazon, using Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence Algorithms and high-resolution imagery to study and detect new fronts of degradation and deforestation caused by logging, mining, and fire activities. Also, as part of its Earth Observation activities and current collaboration with SERVIR-Amazonia and the Spatial Information Group (SIG), they developed the RAMI Platform to visualize and download radar-based mining alerts and validate them with high-resolution data. ACCAs objective is to allow the Peruvian Ministry of Environment, and their stakeholders to improve precision, accuracy and efficiency of the deforestation detection due to mining activities by creating a chain of forensic evidence, so that prosecutors or judges can better enforce the environmental law.

These examples from governments and NGOs across the globe is a small sample of the work being done to increase transparency and accountability in tropical forest countries that is leading to improved policies for sustainable forest management and land use. Ultimately, this work will protect not only the forests themselves but also the indigenous peoples and other species whose lives depend on them.

If youre working to reduce and reverse tropical deforestation, visit us to learn more about the NICFI Satellite Data Program.

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NICFI Users Make Progress Towards Reducing and Reversing tro... - planet.com

Cryptocurrency mining is going nuclear in the home of America's first capital. Data Center Dynamics today reported that Talen Energy plans to establish a nuclear-powered mining operation and data center that will have up to 300MW of on-site power when it's finished, sometime after 2Q 2022.

The mining operation and data center will be built next to the company's Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Pennsylvania, according to the report, and Talen Energy could eventually triple its capacity to 1GW of on-site power.

The facility's power capacity would grow in stages. It's expected to have 164MW of capacity "supported by dual 1+GW nuclear units and two independent substations" when the first phase of development is complete, Data Center Dynamics reported.

This isn't the first time nuclear-powered crypto mining has been proposed. Ukraines Ministry of Energy considered mining with nuclear power in February, and in June, the mayor of Miami pushed for the city's nuclear energy to go toward mining.

Nor is this the first attempt to make crypto mining more environmentally friendly. El Salvador is looking to establish a volcano-powered mining operation, for example, and a hydroelectric plant in New York has started to mine Bitcoin to up its profits.

All of these efforts demonstrate the possibilities available to mining operations looking to mitigate the environmental impact of their businesses. Of course, that's assuming nothing goes wrong at said nuclear facility. We've got plans for nuclear, volcano, hydroelectric power and, hey, you can even join in the renewable energy mining craze with a solar-powered Raspberry Pi project.

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Nuclear-Powered Crypto Plant Planned for PA Next Year. What Could Go Wrong? - Tom's Hardware

The TIOBE Index for July 2021 is out and is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Itranks programming languages in terms of their popularity and while its chart seems to suggest there are wild swings of fortune, you'll notice that Java and C were the top two languages in 2001 and are still the top two in 2021.

Prefacing his commentary on this month's ranking Paul Jansen CEO TIOBE Software explains that the first TIOBE Programming Community Index was published, in 2001, as:

a personal hobby project to see what languages were in demand

It is certainly worth celebrating the fact that 20 years on it still gets published every month, enabling us to discern interesting trends and shifts in the programming landscape. Not only is fun to monitor, it correlates reasonably well with other indicators of language popularity and therefore has reasonable face validity.

Over recent month's the focus of interest for the TIOBE Index is the inexorable rise of Python. InPython Set To Be Top Language, reporting the TIOBE Index from June 2019, Mike James commented:

The TIOBE index gives Python only 3 or 4 years to leave C and Java in the dust and claim the top spot. Given the amount of legacy code in Java and the specialist nature of C programming, I'm not sure it is going to be quite so easy, but Python certainly is a phenomenon.

Two years on and Python is already very close to catching up with C and has alreadyovertaken Java on two occasion, albeit only temporarily. Commenting on the latest rankings ofC, Java, and Python, Jansen writes:

It is interesting to see that these 3 languages are getting closer than ever before. The difference between position 1 and position 3 is only 0.67%. This means that the next few months will be exciting. What language is going to win this battle? Python seems to have the best chances to become number 1, thanks to its market leadership in the booming field of data mining and artificial intelligence.

Looking at the chart, it is obvious that Java and C take periodic slides while Python overall trend is on the up. And when you look at the year-on-year changes in the table below C has declined by almost 5% since last July, Java by almost 4% while Python has increased it share by almost 2%.

One thing that stands out from the above listing is that year on year there's no difference in the relative positions of the top 7 languages, emphasizing the phenomenon previously noted that it is difficult for new languages to rise rapidly in this index. On the other hand, whereas back in 2001 Java, as the top language, had a rating of 26.5%, today the top rating, for C is only 11.62%. This bears out the idea that most programmers are interested in multiple languages. It's also good to see that "old timers" such as Fortran and Delphi can still find a place in the top 20.

TIOBE Index

Python Set To Be Top Language

The Dance Of The Programming Languages

Why Do Some Languages Always Come Top?

Fortran Re-enters TIOBE Index Top 20 While Objective-C Leaves

Delphi About To Fall Out Of TIOBE Index Top 20

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Python Trending To Top Spot In TIOBE Index - iProgrammer