For those of you that wonder what I do when I'm not travelling, here's my list of stuff I did today:
1. Got up
2. Ate breakfast
3. Corresponded with contacts in SE Asia about a trip planned to that area
4. Worked on planning ideas for a new program (somewhere in Africa--location to be revealed)
5. Helped translate a technical document about plant propagation into Haitian Creole (used Google Translate)
6. Researched and downloaded data on tree cover in SE Asia  (see image below)
7. Packed
8. Went to airport
9. Sat at airport
10. Still sitting at airport

A full day really.

This file shows percent tree cover in 2010 for part of South East Asia. Most of the work is done in advance by folks at NASA and their partners. Estimating tree cover is not an easy thing and there are a number of ways of doing it, each with varying levels of reliability. Interpreting the data for our purposes or in order to be able to post it on a blog like this is another whole step.