EARTH ART STUDIO
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    • Creating Living Artworks
    • Satellite Images
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    • Youth reflections
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    • Acknowledging Indigenous Rights
    • Oromo tree circle
    • The Lion
    • Adopt a Tree
    • Celebrations
    • What's Next
    • Symposium
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    • Plant Graffiti
    • TREE CIRCLES
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SATELLITE IMAGES
Google Earth

This project has harnessed Google Earth ​for community learning, enabling communities opportunities to better understand and observe climate changes and the impact of tree planting in their own backyard. This ability to monitor climate mitigation from the ground up is extremely empowering to rural and remote communities, who are often facing the impacts of climate change in isolation and often lack access to scientific tools to immediately monitor their own land.

The ability to use Google Earth as a public tool and to create 'living artworks' as observable artworks and forests from space, we hope can become a template for other global communities as well as a call to action in planting their own trees and vegetation in patterns that can be recorded by satellite. Creation of 'living artworks' can visually reinforce the critical nature of earth systems and how we care for them.

School plantings by ROBA students 
recorded by MaxmarTechnologies, Landsat-Copernicus satellite for Google Earth

Living artwork (1) Concentric Circle - Gadaa design (right)
https://earth.google.com/web/@7.09653655,38.79490112,2678.00599532a,279.37228323d,35y,-65.25410856h,44.99511807t,0r

Living artwork (2) Concentric Circle - Gadaa design (below)
​https://earth.google.com/web/search/N+07.12727++E+038.82125/@7.12755878,38.82135737,2669.70157179a,217.47418638d,35y,122.94093896h,59.99481027t,0r/data=CigiJgokCTff8V_YnBxAEeJsJr__VRxAGT0NCt6GZUNAIVhAjl99XUNA
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By using an under-utilized digital media channel, Google Earth Satellite, for art – the artists and Kofele participants in Ethiopia are challenging our perspectives on how climate mitigation can combine both climate science and art together. ​
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Ultimately the success of the project lies in Ethiopian participants using visualisation tools to understand land management in a time of climate change. Well planted and tended tree verges can assist to create productive lands with better soils and future-proof sites from climate issues such as excess rain runoff to erosion.  
As much as 83% of water coming to the ground is condensed directly from the atmosphere by trees. The planting of seedling trees will help give rise to a dynamic system that can assist in carbon capture and in water restoration services. Trees  act as gigantic condensing systems and are responsible for capturing water out of the air.

​In the future we should ask ourselves not so much about 'How much rainfall impacts an area? But rather 'What tree cover is in your home city, village or farms?'  It is a fact that trees help amplify water and clean air resources. 

WORLD's FIRST CLIMATE EARTH OBSERVATION ARTWORK 

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​Climate science and the arts can be part of wider toolkits to create nature based solutions to assist in climate mitigation, while creating new mesmerizing visual forms. 

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Kofele ROBA school and satellite image overview of the Black Lion Planting 
https://earth.google.com/web/@7.10726566,38.80210683,2676.87622393a,322.59294341d,35y,0.00000001h,60.00037107t,0.00000001r

EARTH OBSERVATION RESOURCES

United Nations - Office for Outer Space Affairs
www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/aboutus/roles-responsibilities.html

Current & near-term advances in earth observation for ecological applications, Ecological Processes Journal (2021)
https://ecologicalprocesses.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s13717-020-00255-4

Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute
https://etssti.org/about-essti/

European Space Agency Publications
https://espi.or.at/publications/collaborative-studies

LandSat9
The Landsat program is the longest-running enterprise for acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth. 
https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/landsat-9/landsat-9-overview

Google Pro Earth 
Download the application

https://www.google.com/earth/versions/​

Copyright
https://about.google/brand-resource-center/products-and-services/geo-guidelines/#required-attribution

Worldview Snapshots is a lightweight tool for creating image snapshots from a selection of popular NASA satellite imagery
https://wvs.earthdata.nasa.gov/

CLIMATE 

The Nature Conservancy Climate Change Guide
https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/tackle-climate-change/climate-change-stories/climate-change-frequently-asked-questions/





PanAfrican Planetary and Space Science Network (PAPSSN)​
https://www.papssnmobility.org

Reflections on the value of ethics in relation to Earth observation
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01431161.2012.718466
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SPOT 4 - 5 satellites: four multispectral bands to 20m spatial resolution of Canadian tree line (years 2005-2010) Interactive Map
https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/d1fc6010-e2e7-401a-8dc1-544cd2ac0b03
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Satellite-Based Earth Observation Trends and Challenges for Economy and Society (2018)
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-74805-4  /
link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-319-74805-4.pdf


United Nations - Office for Outer Space Affairs
www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/aboutus/roles-responsibilities.html


TREES & CLIMATE

Environmental Education: Project Learning Tree
https://www.plt.org/activity-resources/focus-on-forests-activity-8-climate-change-and-forests/


National Centre for Atmospheric research: Tree Rings and Understanding climate change
https://aambpublicoceanservice.blob.core.windows.net/oceanserviceprod/education/pd/climate/teachingclimate/trees_recorders_of_time.pdf




Who’s behind the project?
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​Trees for Life project has been supported by the British Council’s Creative Commissions 2021 programme. This was a series of creative commissions exploring climate change through art, science and digital technology for presentation at COP26.

Trees for Life continues as an active artists-community collaboration and illustrates that land rehabilitation doesn’t need to be expensive. We understand the benefit of trees to the land and that people can assist in creating better soils and future-proofing sites from climate issues by planting trees. 
 
Trees for Life also highlights that sustainability is dependent on the motivation and generosity of citizens, communities, artists, and scientists working together to redefine the challenges of climate change and to foster the next generation with the idea that we can make an impact through climate art and other creative approaches.

Tree Circles and Trees for Life
 project are co-led by climate design and media artists, Sylvia Grace Borda (Canada) and J.Keith Donnelly (UK) together with partners Ethiopia (ROBA – Rural Organisation for the Betterment of Agro-Pastoralists ) in the UK (Dundee UNESCO City of Design, Dundee City Council, Scotland),  and Canada (Institute for Sustainable Horticulture, Kwantlen Polytechnic University) to creatively respond to global issues of climate change.  ​

  • Home
  • Trees for Life
    • The Project
    • Creating Living Artworks
    • Satellite Images
    • Tree Nursery
    • Field Notes from ROBA
    • Youth reflections
    • Climate reflections
    • Elder Knowledge
    • Acknowledging Indigenous Rights
    • Oromo tree circle
    • The Lion
    • Adopt a Tree
    • Celebrations
    • What's Next
    • Symposium
  • TREE CIRCLES
    • Plant Graffiti
    • TREE CIRCLES
    • Partners
  • Internet of Nature
    • Internet of Nature
    • COP26
    • City of Dundee
  • Exhibition kits
    • Exhibition kits
    • Resources
    • Tree stories making the news
  • About Us