Ecosystem restoration and conservation are crucial for protecting Earth’s biodiversity and achieving climate mitigation goals. Restoration has the potential to draw down about 30 percent of accumulated global carbon emissions and is a key component of many nations’ climate mitigation goals. Ecologically and socially responsible restoration has the potential to increase food security for more than 1.3 billion people, and avoid 60 percent of expected species extinctions. However, the biggest impacts are often felt most acutely at the local scale and where people depend on biodiversity for their livelihoods. Protecting and rebuilding ecosystems are therefore local challenges. But the right scientific data and resources are often inaccessible and difficult to use.

Restor is the first platform of its kind. It accelerates ecosystem restoration by providing free and open access to valuable ecological data and insights, high-resolution satellite imagery, and a network that connects restoration experts, scientists, funders, and supporters.

Protecting and restoring the world’s ecosystems is critical for safeguarding biodiversity and fighting climate change. Restor is an open-data platform for the global restoration movement that connects everyone with local ecosystem restoration. Whether you’re leading a wetland conservation project, replanting a plot of land in your community, or simply want to understand what can grow in your own backyard, Restor enables everyone, everywhere to take action from data.

Restor allows anyone to analyze the restoration potential of any place on Earth. When you outline any area on the Restor map, you’ll receive data on local biodiversity, current and potential soil carbon, and other variables like land cover, soil PH and annual rainfall. With this information, anyone can better understand their local environment and become a restoration practitioner. The platform connects practitioners, facilitates the exchange of information, and makes projects visible to potential funders and the public.

Founded by an expert organization in global ecology and biodiversity, and developed with support from an expert organization in AI & technology, Restor brings together both worlds. By collaborating with restoration organizations before launch - the team ensured the platform met users’ needs and that the data needed to make the platform useful was gathered. Restor is an official partner of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and has continued to garner a strong, credible reputation as a global leader in the climate space.

Restor supports the future of ecological research and science. As the platform grows, the scientific research and ecological models underlying it will become more accurate and robust. One key partnership has enabled Restor users to access high definition imagery of Earth that can enable them to see changes in their projects through time lapse imagery, in some cases stretching back 15 years.

Like a Google Maps for nature, Restor builds networks between projects, activists, funders, and the public. Now, major scientific datasets and high-resolution satellite imagery are at the fingertips of restoration practitioners all over the world, accelerating and strengthening their vital work.

Designers and creative technologists partnered closely with data scientists, ecological researchers and community managers to design and develop the platform. User research conducted with restoration organizations established pain points the platform, technology and machine learning could address. Throughout development, new ecological models were created to provide unique insights about projects.

Restor supports the future of ecological research and science. As the platform grows, the scientific research and ecological models underlying it will become more accurate and robust.

The platform is designed to make restoration information accessible to anyone. Upon first opening the platform, users are shown a global map view with pins marking every restoration project (currently over 107,000!). Users can tap into an existing site or explore any area. The platform currently has 21 data layers that users can toggle between or overlap to choose how they see and understand a given area and its restoration potential. The layers include data points like: annual mean Precipitation, Soil pH, and Global Tree Potential. One key partnership has enabled Restor users to access high definition imagery of Earth that can enable them to see changes in their project sites through time lapse imagery, in some cases stretching back 15 years.

Another key element of data visualization is the “Global Predictions” panel that exists for every site. Here, users can access statistics, charts, imagery, and graphs that provide insights into eight topics including Biodiversity, Tree Cover, and Socioeconomic.