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The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded a grant of $451,000 to Clark Labs in support of their current work with Google.org in the development of on-line tools for REDD projects. REDD, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, is a climate change mitigation strategy that offers developing countries incentives to reduce forest carbon emissions.

One of the first required activities of REDD is the modeling of a business-as-usual baseline, a scenario of projected deforestation that would occur in the absence of REDD. The Land Change Modeler application within the IDRISI Taiga software, developed by Clark Labs, includes the capacity to model a baseline, with tools for the calibration, validation and creation of maps of expected future deforestation trends, a fairly complex process. Yet the implementation of REDD relies on substantial computing and data resources, and requires significant effort and investment. It is hoped that providing accessible modeling tools with Google’s cloud computing resources and wealth of geospatial data will encourage broader adoption of REDD.