Screenshot from Google Earth's new boreal forest tour
Credit: Google Earth Outreach

Today Google Earth Outreach launched a new program in Canada.  One of Google Earth’s top priorities was to focus on Canada’s boreal forest.  You can now take a three-minute tour of Canada’s boreal forest, allowing an easy-to-use vehicle for millions of people around the world to quickly learn more about the boreal.  On the tour, participants will see the boreal forest from space in its global context and then will zoom in and “fly-over” landscapes to learn about the features that make Canada’s boreal forest globally unique, including:

• bears, wolves, and caribou that still roam its vast landscape;
• the hundreds of Aboriginal communities;
• the massive storehouse of carbon in its peatlands, soil, and permafrost;
• its vast waterways and wetlands like the Mackenzie River Watershed and the Peace-Athabasca Delta;
• and free-flowing rivers that are the last strongholds for healthy runs of North American Atlantic salmon.

We invite you to experience the boreal forest from this perspective, and share it with others. We hope that this will prove to be an important part of efforts to educate people around the world about the importance of Canada’s boreal forest and the need to protect it.

Here is the tour on YouTube. You can download the tour to view directly in Google Earth at the link below it.

Google Earth downloadable file and press release:
http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/press-releases/pews-boreal-forest-tour-showcased-at-google-earth-canada-launch-85899364505