Press Release

Contact:
 Adlai Amor, Media Director
 Tel: (+1-202) 729-7736 Email: aamor@wri.org

ERDAS Donates Software to Global Forest Watch

ATLANTA, GEORGIA, USA--ERDAS Inc. is donating ERDAS IMAGINE geographic  imaging software to support the Global Forest Watch program, an initiative  launched last month by the World Resources Institute to map and publicly  document forest development activities around the world.  

"Global Forest Watch is undoubtedly the most important forest resources monitoring program underway in the world today because it puts accurate, up-to-date information on the conditions of forests worldwide into the public domain," said ERDAS Vice President Bruce Rado. "The program tracks how well forest development projects are abiding by established national laws."

ERDAS IMAGINE software will be used by Global Forest Watch personnel and partners this year in Russia, Canada, Venezuela, Chile and the United States. They will use the ERDAS products as their primary software used in the project to analyze satellite imagery to map the precise extent and condition of forests and to identify threats such as logging, mining, road building and other forest development. 

 "ERDAS was on our wish list for the program, and we are grateful they are participating," said Dirk Bryant, Director of Global Forest Watch. "A big part of this program is to bridge the digital divide and put tools like ERDAS IMAGINE into the hands of our partners in areas where technology is lacking."

ERDAS has agreed to contribute software as well as training and technical support. The packages included in the contribution are IMAGINE Professional, IMAGINE Vector Module, IMAGINE OrthoBASE, IMAGINE VirtualGIS and Stereo Analyst.

In the next five years, the software will be distributed to Global Forest Watch partners--universities, environmental organizations and government agencies--in up to 21 countries representing 80 percent of the world's remaining frontier forests.

"Digital technology is what will make Global Forest Watch a success," said Bryant.

Global Forest Watch plans to leverage the digital capabilities of ERDAS' geographic imaging software in combination with GIS software from ESRI Inc. of Redlands, Calif., to process and analyze a variety of spatial data and display the results graphically over the Internet. Already, initial maps of forest cover in Canada, Gabon and Cameroon are available on the Internet at www.globalforestwatch.org.

"The power of this program lies in the fact that governments, environmental groups and individuals have equal access to the same uncensored information about forest conditions," said Rado. "And through the use of graphical map displays, they see and understand the impact that deforestation and other development activities are having on our forests."

The initial Global Forest Watch findings indicate that less than one fifth of the world's historic forest cover remains as frontier forest, and at the current rates of deforestation and development, another 40 percent could be lost in the next two decades, according to the first report issued by the group on Feb. 29, 2000.

For more information about Global Forest Watch, contact Peter Leimgruber:  tel.: +1 202-729-7704 or E-mail: peterl@wri.org. For more information about ERDAS' geographic imaging products and services, contact ERDAS:  tel.: +1 404-248-9000, toll free: +1 877 GO ERDAS (463-7327), or visit www.erdas.com .