This app will give you near real-time alerts whenever deforestation happens

What if you could catch illegal loggers before they swing the ax?

Like Tom Cruise in Minority Report — arresting murderers just before they kill — the key is the technology (or weird, genetically mutated mind-readers in the case of the sci-fi thriller).

For the world's forests, researchers have developed a satellite-based alert system that detects logging with a week or even hours after trees start falling, and in some cases, before clear-cutting even begins.

The new tool, developed by University of Maryland geographer Matthew Hansen, is a significant improvement on existing information-gathering tools that conservationists are already using to fight deforestation. Read more...