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East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

maps

Interactive climate change map shows what a warmer world could look like

Submitted by James I Davison on Mon, 2009-11-02 17:21

As next month’s climate change conference in Copenhagen draws closer, we are undoubtedly going to see the amount of online discourse on the topic continue to increase. The latest example comes from the British government, which last week released an interactive map showing the possible impact of a global temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit). An article in the Guardian says the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre produced the map based on a recent study that indicates, "such a 4C rise could come as soon as 2060 without urgent and serious action to reduce emissions." The newspaper also quotes the government’s chief scientist as saying that such a temperature shift would be “disastrous.”

Indeed, after exploring the map for just a few minutes, you see how devastating the consequences of a warmer planet might be. By zooming in and clicking and dragging with your mouse, you can navigate the map to see what could happen to different parts of the globe. Be sure to click on some of the plus signs, which give you a brief overview of an issue and the option to click to learn more and view sources of the research. The map, its creators say, displays the latest in peer-reviewed climate change research.

Looking around East Asia, you’ll see that some of the impacts listed include decrease in rice yield, extreme temperatures in population centers of eastern China, and flooding caused by rising sea levels.
 

Click on the map to interact. View full screen map here.

(Hat tip: From Poverty to Power blog.)

The world’s resources, at a glance

Submitted by James I Davison on Fri, 2009-10-23 12:40

Here’s an interesting and quick item to check out on a Friday. This map gives an attractive, at-a-glace look at some of the world’s key natural resources, organized by country. A couple of things to note that are East Asia-related: China leads more categories (at least on this map) than any other country, including wheat, cotton, gold and rice. Thailand and Indonesia also are represented, as leaders in rubber production.

Click map to view large.

It's usually worth noting the source of the data used for these types of graphics. The sources named are the CIA World Factbook, the USDA World Crop Supply Assessment and the British Geological Survey's World Mineral Statistics.

(Hat tip: Datavisualization and Webdesigner Depot)

Indonesia's 'big bang' decentralization experiment: Helping poor regions spend resources well

Submitted by Wolfgang Fengler on Thu, 2009-08-20 12:40

After five years in Indonesia, my family and I have left this wonderful country and moved to Kenya. The last five years have been excellent years for Indonesia. The economy stabilized, growth resumed and services started to improve, although modestly and not in all areas. Indonesia still remains an underrated country, but this may change. Indonesia has only mildly been affected by the global crisis. After holding its second direct presidential election, where more than 100 million Indonesians cast their votes, the country can expect another five years of political and economic stability, and possibly some improvements in the business climate.

In my last blog on Indonesia, I’d like to focus on Indonesia’s decentralization experiment, which was put in place ten years ago and made effective on January 1, 2001. Indonesia’s decentralization was a by-product of its democratization after the dismantling of Suharto’s “new order” regime.  Indonesia then implemented one of the most ambitious decentralization programs of modern times, radically transferring responsibility and financial resources to lower levels of government. My colleagues Bert Hofman and Kai Kaiser coined the phrase “big bang decentralization” (pdf). Even though decentralization makes sense in a country covering three time zones and more than 17,000 islands, many were skeptical about this experiment, particularly in the central government.

Showing vs. Telling: map shows half the world represented by 5 percent GDP

Submitted by James I Davison on Wed, 2009-07-29 14:27

It always seems to be the case that by simply writing or saying something, you can hardly get the same point across as by presenting it in a visual way. For example, it’s one thing to say, “three billion people (a little less than half the world’s population) comprise the bottom 5 percent of global GDP contributors.” But as the Strange Maps blog points out, it’s a little more eye-opening to show a map with those countries completely missing.

I’m not sure this map accomplishes much more than to illustrate a single interesting point – unlike the SHOW World animated maps we wrote about earlier this year or the popular WorldMapper Collection, both of which put several data sets in a visual format.

The map does, however, highlight the interesting fact that most of the countries represented are either in Southeast Asia or Africa. Check it out here.

Biodiversity meets social networks in new macroscopic observatory

Submitted by Claudia Gabarain on Mon, 2009-06-01 23:51

A promising web find that should catch the attention of our resident biodiversity expert, Tony, if it hasn't already: scientists from around the world are gathering this week in London for the e-Biosphere Conference, where they'll present and discuss a project to create a "macroscopic observatory" of biodiversity that will combine social networks in internet and contributions by their users.

James Edwards, executive director of the Encyclopedia of Life at the Smithsonian Institution and conference organizer, explains the system will be free of charge and open to all. Any user will be able to access a satellite image through the web and get detailed information on every species in it, from the trees to the insects in that ecosystem or data on the DNA of the microbes living in those insects. Or anyone could look up an insect from his garden, identify it and get information on its origin and potential damage. Also, users will be able to contribute their own observations to create a huge world database that would help understand the environmental changes in different areas of the globe.

According to the organizers, many of the components of the observatory are already up and running, so it's just a matter of getting the systems connected to start seeing some results. A couple of these components are ARKive, a database of photos and videos, and Aquamaps, a marine biodiversity map system.

Watch how the world has changed through animated bubbles

Submitted by James I Davison on Tue, 2009-04-21 12:22

I was never too great with numbers or math. I guess you could call me a visual learner. Which is why I was intrigued after exploring Gapminder.org. The non-profit organization behind the website says it's dedicated to "unveiling the beauty of statistics." They attempt to do this with impressively interactive and animated graphs. The cool part is in the Gapminder World, which visually displays a wealth of statistics "about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels." Their goal is to make the data, which comes from organizations like the United Nations and World Bank, accessible and understandable by anyone.

The key is seeing how different parts of the world have changed over time. After setting and comparing data based on a wide range of variables, you can hit Play, setting into motion the bubbles (each of which represents a country or more specific location) that float around the axes as the years change.

Deforestation in Sumatra, Indonesia – mapping the "thwacking"

Submitted by Tony Whitten on Wed, 2009-04-15 10:33

Click map to enlarge.

Looking at the new maps of Sumatra's forests, the Once-ler in Dr Seuss' The Lorax would not conclude that we "cared a whole awful lot," but rather that we were cutting them down as fast as we please.

It's nearly 35 years since I first flew over Sumatra, an island in western Indonesia. Looking out of the plane window, the dark green forests stretched to the horizon. Even if there weren't any Truffula trees, there were many herds of elephants, families of tigers, groups of monkeys and many thousands of lone orangutans calling and moving around the forest, hardly ever crossing paths with humans. Then came the organized loggers, the transmigration settlements, and the plantations – rubber, oil palm and industrial timber.

About half Sumatra's forests have been lost since 1985. Last year, a WWF report (pdf) found that forest cover in Riau province, central Sumatra, has fallen from 78% to 25% in 25 years.

Changing the world (map), one dataset at a time

Submitted by James I Davison on Wed, 2009-02-18 13:34

If you are a visual learner like me, or you just happen to like nifty animated maps, a site called SHOW World may be worth spending an afternoon coffee/tea break or two to check out. Similar to the popular WorldMapper collection, this site displays a lot of data from a number of sources (including, apparently, the World Bank) in map form. On an Excel spreadsheet, the information would just look like numbers or a boring old graph. But this site, as SHOW World puts it, offers "a new way to look at the world by resizing countries on the map according to a series of global issues."

The site appears to be adding new datasets to compare, but as it stands you can compare countries on everything from urban populations and CO2 emissions to even Internet usage.

The embedded map below enlarges countries with higher gross domestic product, shrinking those with smaller GDP. Click the center of the map to resize it (or check it out here).

 

(hat tip information aesthetics)

How windy is your neighborhood? Interactive map shows you

Submitted by James I Davison on Tue, 2009-02-03 10:55

Here’s a website that might pique your interest, even if you don’t plan on becoming the next T. Boone Pickens – a wealthy American businessman who is investing millions of his own dollars in wind energy. A site called FirstLook has a Google Maps mashup overlaying years of meteorological wind data onto an interactive map.

They’ve recently expanded their wind data to cover the entire planet, making it a really easy tool to see potential spots for future wind farms in Mongolia (pretty good) versus Indonesia (not so good). The website sells detailed site location information, which is intended for entrepreneurs looking to get in on the ground floor of alternative energy investments. Still, I think the free wind speed data is interesting by itself.

The FirstLook site also has a section to look at an area’s solar satellite data, but it unfortunately only covers the places in the United States.

(via Springwise.com)

Mapping deforestation, endangered species, and more with Google Earth

Submitted by Claudia Gabarain on Tue, 2008-06-24 22:47

Checking out Mongabay.com, I came across a very cool application of Google Earth to see the levels of deforestation across the world, including short data sheets per country. So you can quickly see that Malaysia has lost over 6% of its forest cover between 1990 and 2005 (according to different data sources), while China has increased its own by 25% over the same period of time.

The nicer discovery, though, were the other maps the same developer, David Tryse, has been creating on environmental issues (check them all out in his website): the top 100 most Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) mammal and amphibian species, 34 biodiversity hotspots according to Conservation International, and protected area networks --or national parks-- worldwide, among others.

Note that the sources of data are rather varied. To view and explore the maps, you need to download Google Earth and install it in your computer, save the KML file/s provided for each map (KML is a file format used to display geographic data), and open them from Google Earth. At the bottom of that list of maps, you will find a link to download all files at once if you want, and you can also subscribe to updates for new maps that David may come up with.