Paul Donald, a conservation scientist with the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), gives a great example of how these pictures can be used to understand the geographical distribution of very poorly known avian species.

BBC: Landsat aims to maintain gold standard

Until a few years ago, assessing the amount of plant matter in a forest in a cheap and accurate manner seemed an insurmountable problem, according to Eric Dinerstein, chief scientist of the World Wide Fund for Nature, a conservation group that is also involved in the Nepalese lidar project.

ECONOMIST: Forest conservation