Google technology for measuring changes on earth's forests

On October 2009, at the International Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, Google presented a new technology prototype that enables online, global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's forests. "Implementing a global REDD system will require that each nation have the ability to accurately monitor and report the state of their forests over time, in a manner that is independently verifiable. However, many of these tropical nations of the world lack the technological resources to do this, so we're working with scientists, governments and non-profits to change this. Here's what we've done with this prototype to help nations monitor their forests." How does it work? The clearly explained it in their blog:

With CLASlite, Google will be offering scientists and tropical nations access to a high-performance satellite imagery-processing engine running online, in the “Google cloud”. CLASlite online - This shows deforestation and degradation in Rondonia, Brazil from 1986-2008, with the red indicating recent activity As a Google.org product, this technology will be provided to the world as a not-for-profit service. This technology prototype is currently available to a small set of partners for testing purposes — it's not yet available to the general public.