GFW Pro is Consolidating into Global Nature Watch
In June 2026, Global Forest Watch became Global Nature Watch to reflect our mission to advance forest monitoring while expanding to a broader range of ecosystems. As part of that evolution, we are consolidating our product suite to provide a more unified platform for monitoring and protecting the world’s forests and nature. Thus, instead of maintaining separate, overlapping systems, we can offer a more cohesive experience that flexibly meets a wide range of needs while delivering new capabilities faster.
As part of this consolidation, we are expanding Global Nature Watch (GNW) to serve many of the core needs GFW Pro supports today.
As a result, GFW Pro will retire on December 31, 2026, including both the web interface and the Pro API.
We know this is a short runway, particularly for cooperatives and smaller organizations. Both paths described below are open to you today, and we will keep the migration reference updated as further capabilities arrive. Read on to learn more about options for your future monitoring needs, what is changing, what this means for you, and steps you should take now.
Paths forward for future monitoring needs
If you use GFW Pro today, there are two paths forward, with no WRI fees, that are available now to ensure your monitoring needs are covered in the future:
Global Nature Watch Self-Hosted Monitoring
Global Nature Watch Self-Hosted Monitoring (SHM) gives you GFW Pro’s most-used post-2020 deforestation risk and recent alerts analyses as assets you run yourself, with no dependency on the GFW Pro interface or API. EUDR compliance support remains central to GNW, and the SBTN Natural Lands Map and the JRC Global Forest Cover baseline are included in SHM to support a convergence of evidence approach to risk assessment.
With SHM, rather than submitting source location geometries to GFW Pro for processing, you download analysis-ready, cloud-optimized Zarr datasets along with the analytical scripts that reproduce the analyses on your own infrastructure.
The datasets are openly available from WRI Data Explorer, each under its own license terms, which are set out in the documentation linked from the listing. The scripts are published on GitHub under Apache 2.0. There is no fee from WRI for either — you pay only your own AWS storage and data transfer costs. Analyses run on your own trusted infrastructure, your supply chain geometries never leave your organization, and processing can be parallelized for throughput. Using this method, your outputs will align closely with GFW Pro results, with small differences arising from resolution resampling and pixel selection along polygon boundaries. All computation runs at 10-meter resolution to take full advantage of datasets at that resolution.
Getting started requires GIS or data engineering capability and an AWS account. Since datasets are downloadable from a requester-pays S3 bucket, we recommend keeping a local copy so you only download again when a dataset updates. To get started, explore our technical documentation, methodology, terms of use and attribution guidance online here, and fill out our feedback survey to help us make sure SHM meets your needs.
Global Nature Watch Horizon
GNW Horizon is our free, AI-enabled, next-generation monitoring experience in preview: available online, more interactive, and improved performance from past monitoring platforms. It requires no GIS expertise, no infrastructure of your own, and no fees.
You can ask questions in plain language, explore a map, build custom metrics and charts, and download results across relevant datasets including tree cover loss, tree cover extent, primary forest, SBTN natural lands, disturbance alerts, protected areas, and Indigenous and community lands for areas you upload or draw. Horizon grounds every response in the same peer-reviewed datasets that powered Global Forest Watch for more than a decade, as well as incorporating expanded datasets from Land & Carbon Lab, and each insight includes a “see how this was generated” option so you can trace any output to its source and reproduce it.
Purpose-built Post-2020 Risk Assessment and Integrated Disturbance Alerts for individual locations are coming to Horizon in the months ahead, with how-to guidance in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. These analyses follow the analytical approach established in GFW Pro, so outputs support regulatory and commitment-based supply chain reporting such as EUDR deforestation-free and AFi no-deforestation requirements. Over time, we intend for Horizon to offer the same convergence of evidence approach described above.
Capabilities will continue to evolve, and your feedback will help shape them. Until the Post-2020 Risk Assessment arrives in Horizon, that analysis remains available to you through Self-Hosted Monitoring, and the migration reference below records what is live today.
In general, cooperatives, producer associations, smallholder groups, and NGOs will be best served by Horizon. Enterprises and service providers will generally be best served by Self-Hosted Monitoring. Some organizations will use both.
What these changes mean for you
It is important to note that capabilities do not translate one-for-one. While much is carrying over, there are some changes that may affect your work.
See what’s carrying over and where to find it
You can see more about exactly what is carrying over in the GFW Pro Migration Options reference, which lists each GFW Pro analysis and dataset, where it can be found now, and what is still coming. We will continuously update it as we roll out new capabilities, so be sure to bookmark it and check back frequently.
Changes most likely to affect your work
The Negligible Risk Map has no direct replacement, and we suggest contextual datasets such as tree cover loss by dominant driver for an indicative rather than definitive read.
Planet monthly imagery is not available. The satellite imagery options in Horizon are Landsat, Sentinel, and Google.
Country-specific GFW Pro datasets are not migrating, and national authorities are the route to that data.
Exact GFW Pro report formats for Post-2000 Forest Change and GHG-Protocol dLUC emissions will not carry over, but comparable metrics can be generated for your own areas of interest, and Horizon will support the carbon flux data that underpins next-generation emissions factor calculations.
Centrally administered multi-user organization accounts are not currently supported in Horizon.
If you rely on something you cannot find in the migration reference, contact us through the support form and we will tell you where it stands.
Steps to take now
Export what you need from GFW Pro. Your account stays active until GFW Pro officially retires, but after retirement, all user data will be deleted according to WRI Data Lab policies and cannot be recovered afterward.
Before then:
Download your Lists, including polygon boundaries, in shapefile format
Export the historical analyses you need as CSVs, and print any diagnostic reports you want to keep as PDFs
Do not wait until close to the retirement date, when heavy demand may slow exports. Follow the step-by-step guidance for downloading your lists and other data.
Start evaluating your path. If you plan to use Self-Hosted Monitoring, your technical team can begin today. The datasets, scripts, and documentation are complete, and are offered on a self-service basis without hands-on support. If you plan to use Horizon, create an account and get familiar with it now, so you are ready to get started as Post-2020 analytics arrive. Note that GFW Pro logins do not carry over, so a new Global Nature Watch account is required.
Read the transition FAQ. This covers account access, billing, data retention, security, and export in detail. Sign up for the GNW mailing list to hear about the latest updates, including when post-2020 risk assessment reaches Horizon.
Thank you for making the work of GFW Pro possible
Your work has helped establish GFW Pro as a credible source of insight for EUDR compliance and Accountability Framework no-deforestation commitments. That role does not end with this transition. Our mission is unchanged: open access to the best available data and tools to protect and sustainably manage the world’s forests and land. We look forward to the next chapter, working with you under Global Nature Watch.