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The Carbon Map – a guide for climate-conscious city planning

Read about the development process of The Carbon Map, a carbon emission calculator for more sustainable city planning. Avoin, Natural Resources Institute Finland, and Finnish Environment Institute have joined forces and produced The Carbon Map, a carbon emission calculator, which helps experts calculate how zoning affects the carbon stock of the built environment. The tool…
Read our newest story: The Carbon Map – a guide for climate-conscious city planning

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agriculture, biodiversity, peatlands, sustainable development, virtual mapping

Reducing the environmental impact of peatland agriculture

“In the beginning, there were the swamp, the hoe — and Jussi”, says Finnish author Väinö Linna. But what comes next? This blog post and related article (in Finnish, behind a paywall) were produced as a part of the Makera-fund-supported OMAIHKA-project “Climate change mitigation in organic soils on cattle farms” coordinated by Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE).…
agriculture, Avoin Map, Baltic Sea, ocean protection, sustainable development, virtual mapping

Saving the Baltic Sea — one field at a time

Who knew mapping agricultural practices might help protect the porpoises? As a Finn, I have had the opportunity to grow by the Baltic Sea. This globally unique marine area is low in salinity, comparatively shallow and home to many rare, protected, and adorable mammals such as the harbor porpoise and the Baltic ringed seal. Unfortunately,…
environment, FAO, land cover, virtual mapping

Fighting deforestation with satellite data

Let the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the University of Helsinki, and Avoin show you how it´s done. They say Finland is “the land of thousand lakes”, even though in reality the number is closer to two hundred thousand. Nevertheless, as a Finn, I see the country first and foremost as a land…
environment, sustainable development, virtual mapping

In the open — making environmental data easy to use

Today´s technology makes it easy to send a message or even gifs and videos with our phones. We can navigate maps and purchase pretty much anything online. With these everyday activities made so easy, why is it still so difficult to easily attain environmental data? Avoin is a not-for-profit organization that strives to make work…
environment, personal experience, sustainable development

The mission that will bring us all together

Seeing Aurora Borealis will ignite anyone´s passion for sustainable development. I saw the northern lights for the first time in my life this Friday. In the place where I am currently living, Southern Finland, the phenomenon is not very common, and so we spent a good 30 minutes outside gazing at the slowly dancing drapes…