---
id: data-sources/global-nature-watch
about:
  depiction: data-sources/global-nature-watch.jpg
  label: Global Nature Watch
  description: >-
    Online platform from the World Resources Institute, until 2026 called Global
    Forest Watch, that publishes free global data, maps and alerts on forests
    and is widening its coverage to grasslands, farmland and trees outside
    forests.
  tags:
    - forests
    - deforestation
    - tree cover loss
    - alerts
    - satellite
    - land cover
datasource:
  coverage: >-
    global; forests, with grasslands, agricultural land and trees outside
    forests being added
  cadence: annual tree cover loss data; monthly and weekly deforestation alerts
  access: >-
    free online; a myGNW account saves areas of interest; email alert
    subscriptions
  format: >-
    web map and dashboards, email alerts, the Forest Watcher mobile app for
    offline field use
  homepage: 'https://globalnaturewatch.org/'
open:
  source: unknown
  data: open
  api: unknown
  participation: unknown
  note: The pages read call the data open and free but state no licence.
domains:
  - ecology
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: 'Forest Monitoring, Land Use & Deforestation Trends'
      url: 'https://globalnaturewatch.org/'
    - title: About GNW
      url: 'https://globalnaturewatch.org/about/'
    - title: Global Forest Watch is Now Global Nature Watch
      url: >-
        https://www.globalnaturewatch.org/blog/data-and-tools/gfw-now-global-nature-watch/
  created: '2026-10-19'
  reviewed: '2026-10-19'
  reviewed_by: >-
    Claude, from the sources listed; the home page is mostly a script shell and
    gave little text
  status: draft
---
Global Nature Watch is the forest and land monitoring platform of the World Resources Institute (WRI), based in Washington, DC. It was known as Global Forest Watch until 2026; the renaming was announced on 1 July 2026 and the site says nothing changes for users but the name. WRI began the programme in 1997 as a network of NGOs reporting on forests in Cameroon, Canada, Gabon and Indonesia, and relaunched it in 2014 as an interactive online map with forest data for the whole world.

The platform publishes annual tree cover loss data (the tenth yearly release came in 2024), monthly and weekly deforestation alerts that users can receive by email, data on the drivers of tree cover loss, maps of forest carbon emissions and removals, plantation data for 82 countries and pan-tropical primary forest data. Its about page gives examples of use: Rainforest Foundation US applied the forest carbon data with Indigenous communities seeking climate finance, the cocoa trader ECOM used it to reduce deforestation in its supply chain, and FOCEN used it to track forest pests in Mexico's Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. WRI cites an evaluation in which areas where Indigenous monitors had satellite data saw 52 percent less deforestation in a year.

The data and tools are free to use online. A myGNW account keeps saved areas of interest, and alert subscriptions continue under the new name; Forest Watcher, a mobile app released in 2017, takes the data offline into the field. GFW Pro, a 2019 tool for companies managing deforestation risk, is the first to be folded into the main platform. A separate preview platform, Global Nature Watch Horizon, carries the AI-driven work under development.

The platform has been operating since 2014 and the site reports more than nine million visitors since then. With the new name WRI is extending coverage beyond forests to grasslands, agricultural land and trees outside forests. In this wiki's stack it is a data layer: observations of land change that a model of a watershed, a region or a supply chain can draw on.