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A new article published in Nature Communications has frankly analyzed the state of our Earth’s environment using “Big Data”. Trends in these large data sets suggest that our watch is running low to make the necessary changes. That said, the researchers report “bright spots” and opportunities to change this.
The unprecedented amount of data we now have on the natural world is excellent for research, but it won’t help us unless it leads to changes in policy and policy action, the team said. We have recently seen what political will can do with research during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we currently see governments making rapid (health) decisions based on quite sophisticated data analysis,” lead author Dr. Rebecca Runting of the University of Melbourne said in a statement. . “There may be opportunities to learn from this and achieve an equally close coupling of analysis and decision-making in the environmental sector.”
Large companies already have the skills and technology to find solutions, write the team, and these must be shared and then incorporated by governments around the world.
Big Data has been able to identify many dramatic changes in the environment. For example, 2.3 million square kilometers (888,000 square miles) of forest were destroyed between 2000 and 2012. Meanwhile, 700,000 satellite images showed that 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles) of marshes have vanished in the past 35 years. . These and many other large studies of data sets have revealed the dangerous state of our planet.
“What the big data revolution has helped us understand is that the environment is often worse than we thought it was. The more we mapped and analyzed, the more we found the state of the environment, even though the Antarctic ice sheets , wetlands or forests, it’s terrible. Big data tells us we’re running out of time, “added co-author Professor James Watson of the University of Queensland.
“The good news is that the big data revolution can help us better understand risk. For example, we can use the data to better understand where future ecosystem degradation will occur and where they interact with wildlife trade, to map the risk of a pandemic. “
Some of this technology is already in use. From monitoring illegal fishing to forest conservation enforcement, big data can also be a tool for action, not just providing insight into the state of our planet. We just need to start using it more, the team concludes.
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