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Before vs after: How the heatwave has devastated London's parks

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00:00This is Hyde Park in March, and this is it only last month.
00:04But it's not only London's park that looks this way.
00:08This is Victoria Park, before and after, and this is Richmond Park, before and after.
00:14In only four months, the capital's landscape has been completely transformed,
00:19with relentless heat waves and a constant lack of rain turning our green spaces into barren wastelands.
00:25And even beyond our city, look at how the southeast of England has changed.
00:30The satellite imagery, produced exclusively for the standard by geospatial analytics company Map Impact,
00:36shows just how hard London has been hit by one of its hottest summers on record.
00:41It's as we enter the fifth heat wave of the year, with almost three quarters of England now in drought.
00:47Greater London saw just 0.2 millimetres of rain in July,
00:51while the fire brigade continues to tackle wildfires almost every day.
00:56But what does that mean for London's parks going forward?
00:59Well, Nina Moisiva, chief scientist at Map Impact, told us,
01:04grass is particularly quick to respond.
01:06Much of this grass is stressed rather than dead, and may recover after sustained rainfall.
01:11But the speed and extent of the change reveals just how widespread the drought has become.
01:20FRERUND CONSUMER
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