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Last night, I received the following message by email from Mr. Mark Hanusz of Equinox Publishing:
Hi there,
I have been a reader of the N95 blog for several months now and am a big fan. Thought you might be interested in an initiative we have just launched in Indonesia: it’s called NEWtrees and it is a reforestation program using geotags, the Nokia N95 and Google Earth. Basically, we are replanting trees in a protected national park (that have been either illegally logged or burned) and applying geotags to them so we know the precise location. We take photos and upload them directly to the internet for the world to see.
The companies involved are WWF, Nokia and my company, Equinox Publishing.
Keep up the great work on the blog.
Best,
Mark Hanusz
So I followed the link will use my publishing power (just kiddin’) to share the press release and some pictures:
Palangkaraya, 7 November 2007:
In an effort to mitigate the effects of global warming, WWF-Indonesia, in cooperation with Nokia and Equinox Publishing, has launched a tree planting campaign in Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan. This initiative, called NEWtrees, gives people an innovative way to help reforest this protected national park and monitor the growth of the trees through geotags (trees labeled with precise latitude and longitude coordinates) viewable via Google Earth and Yahoo Maps.“This project is the first of its kind anywhere in the world and we are excited to join forces with two great companies like Nokia and Equinox to help the Sebangau conservation,” said Nazir Foead, Director of Corporate Engagement at WWF-Indonesia. The site chosen for the initial replanting grid is located near the joint WWF - park authority’s Sebangau field office, approximately 45 minutes by boat from the capital of Central Kalimantan, Palangkaraya.
The first stage of the project will see Nokia support the planting of 100,000 individually-geotagged Jelutung (Dyera costulata) seedlings, a native species of tree that is a favorite of the park’s orangutans. Nokia’s Environment Manager for the Asia Pacific region, Francis Cheong said, “By collaborating in this initiative with WWF-Indonesia and Equinox Publishing, we hope to not only help towards reducing the annual haze that blankets the region, but also contribute in a small way to protecting and preserving Sebangau as an invaluable national asset in the APAC region The geotagging technology that is capable with the Nokia N95, in combination with Google Earth and Yahoo Maps, will help to monitor the development of the trees.”
Photos and locations of the planted trees will be viewable on www.wwf.or.id/NEWtrees beginning with the first ceremonial planting on 7 November 2007.
“There are several interesting reforestation initiatives happening in Indonesia at present but what makes NEWtrees unique is that we have the ability to show exactly where the trees are being planted. Contributing individuals and institutions will receive a certificate with the exact coordinates and date that their trees were planted, and will even be able to visit them,” said Mark Hanusz of Equinox Publishing.
The park authority sees NEWtrees as an important milestone in which the private sector is contributing directly to conservation. Park Manager, Drasospolino, highlighted this initiative as the catalyst for other corporations to participate, and with the aim of rolling such a program out to other national parks in Indonesia.
I can only applaud this great initiative and think that it is really good that 3 companies in totally different areas of interest join their forces for a very good cause. And, it is good to see yet another way in which Nokia shows how “green” the company is…
Next to that, it is great to see the geotagging technology of the N95 being used for something different than your average holiday picture.
Comments 2
Thanks for the post…thought your readers would be interested to know what software we are using for the tree geotagging (although most could probably guess): Nokia N95 (not the 8GB version because it isn’t available here yet) running Shozu (for inserting the geotags and uploading via GPRS to Flickr) and Trippermap for the Google Map on the WWF site.
For the Google Earth Network Link, I made an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the lat and longs of the trees to be planted and exported as a KML file. (Note: each hectare has 400 trees…20×20 and planted 5m apart) We used a Garmin device (forget the model) to calculate the first tree (Nokia1) as it’s accuracy is 2m vs the N95’s 10m (which explains why some of the photos are off a bit).
If anyone has some advice to make this more user-friendly I’d surely appreciate it. I am currently experimenting with LMX (landmark) files to view on the N95 itself but I can’t figure out how to mark multiple locations.
Posted 09 Nov 2007 at 11:46 am ¶this is a good thing to pursue. we need more trees to help us breathe
Posted 12 Nov 2007 at 8:26 am ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 6
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