The forest is a unique and important habitat for humans and animals alike. Forests cover nearly one third of the Earth’s land mass, and around one third of Germany is forested as well at 11.4 million hectares. But forests are not in good condition right now. The changing climate is hitting them hard.
Armed with social media data and satellite images, Dr. Xiaoxiang Zhu and her team at the German Aerospace Center are creating global maps of urban areas that can be used to plan and manage urbanization in the era of global and climate change.
After a torrential rainfall four years ago a mudslide shot through the small town of Altenroda. In order to be better prepared for such extreme weather events in the future, Lennart Schmidt at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research is trying to map the laws of nature with the help of algorithms. But this requires an automatic quality check of the data.
