Researchers on the CrowdLand project, funded by the EU’s European Research Council, are building mobile games and apps in order to get people to send them pictures, observations and location-specific information on land cover using their cameraphones, in the hope they can use the data to generate better land use maps.

New global forest maps combine citizen science with multiple data sources, for an unprecedented level of accuracy about the location and extent of forestland worldwide. New maps of global forest cover from IIASA’s Geo-Wiki team provide a more accurate view of global forests. The maps were published in the journal Remote Sensing of the Environment, and are freely available for exploration and download on the Geo-Wiki web site