Sustainability Maps

explorer.land is a new interactive mapped based story telling tool from OpenForests. The platform is designed to allow organizations around the world to share information about their sustainable land based projects with the wider public.

The explorer.land interactive map allows anyone to search for different sustainable land based projects around the world, discover more about each project's aims and discover the latest project news. Users can search for sustainable land projects on explorer.land by type of project, by country or by name. When you select an individual project you can view the project's location on the interactive map. Individual markers on the map allow you to explore geographical areas that the project wishes to highlight and posts that the project has pinned to the interactive map.

The map sidebar provides extensive details about each selected project. These details include an overview of the chosen sustainable land based project, their latest news and contact details for those who wish to learn more about the selected project.

explorer.land is one of many social & ecologically diverse forestry projects developed by OpenForests. 

Climate change is set to change life in America for ever. Even under the most optimistic scenarios the habitable zone (where temperature and precipitation are most suitable for human habitation) is set to shift drastically northwards in the next 30 years. Under this scenario much of the south and southwest of the country will experience extreme heat for most of the year. 

You can discover how climate change will affect your county using ProPublica's new interactive data visualization of how global heating will change the climate of the United States. In New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States ProPublica has used the latest climate change data to forecast and map temperature and precipitation levels in the USA in 30 years time.

If you enter your county into the ProPublica interactive you can view how global heating will affect your environment.The article includes maps which show the forecasts for extreme 'wet bulb' days, large wildfires, rising sea levels, farm crop yields and the economic damage expected from global heating. The maps all highlight and provide the forecast data for your entered county. The article also includes a table which ranks the most at-risk counties in the U.S. from the forecast levels of global heating.

We all rely on nature for our food & water and even for the air that we breathe. These are only some of the most visible benefits that nature provides. The UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services (IPBES) believe that we all need to better understand the full value of nature in order to ensure that we take every step to protect it for sustainable use.

Stanford University's Natural Capital Project explores some of the contributions which nature makes to people around the world. You can explore some of these contributions on the Nature's Contributions to People Viewer. This 3d globe allows users to see where we are receiving benefits from nature around the world. It also allows us to see where people are likely to lose these vital benefits from nature as ecosystems are negatively impacted by human development projects.

The globe concentrates on three key areas: pollination, water quality and coastal risk. You can select to view any of these key areas from the map menu to view how the area could be affected under different future scenarios. These scenarios show how the flow of these benefits might change in the future around the world. By 2050 around 5 billion people across the globe could be at higher risk of under-pollinated crops, water pollution and coastal storms. The Nature's Contributions to People Viewer allows us to see where these risks might be the greatest in each of these three key areas.

The IPBES's studies into biodiversity and ecosystems reveal that people in developing countries rely more heavily on the benefits of local ecosystems. Going forward these people are most at risk from the detrimental impacts on local ecosystems. The Nature's Contributions to People Viewer can help to identify where these ecosystems are most at risk and help to inform policy makers where sustainable development and conservation is most at need to protect biodiversity and local ecosystems.