Satellites and AI Can Help Solve Big Problems—If Given the Chance
June 6th, 2022
Via Wired, a report on some of the hurdles that stand in the way of ambitious plans to use imagery to help feed people, reduce poverty, and protect the planet:
For the past three decades, three decades, geologist Carlos Souza has worked at the Brazil-based nonprofit Imazon, exploring ways he and the teams he coordinates can use applied science to protect the Amazon rainforest. For much of that time, satellite imagery has been a big part of his job.
In the early 2000s, Souza and colleagues came to understand that 90 percent of deforestation occurs within 5 kilometers of newly created roads. While satellites have long been able to track road expansion, the old way of doing things required people to label those findings by hand, amassing what would eventually become training data. Those years of labor paid off last fall with the release of an AI system that Imazon says reveals 13 times more roadway than the previous method, with an accuracy rate of between 70 and 90 percent.
Proponents of satellite imagery and machine learning have ambitious plans to solve big problems at scale. The technology can play a role in anti-poverty campaigns, protect the environment, help billions of people obtain street addresses, and increase crop yields in the face of intensifying climate change. A UNESCO report published this spring highlights 100 AI models with the potential to transform the world for the better. But despite recent advances in deep learning and the quality of satellite imagery, as well as the record number of satellites expected to enter orbit over the next few years, ambitious efforts to use AI to solve big problems at scale still encounter traditional hurdles, like government bureaucracy or a lack of political will or resources.
Stopping deforestation, for instance, requires more than spotting the problem from space. A Brazilian federal government program helped reduce deforestation from 2004 to 2012 by 80 percent compared to previous years, but then federal support waned. In keeping with an election promise, President Jair Bolsonaro weakened enforcement and encouraged opening the rainforest to industry and cattle ranch settlers. As a result, deforestation in the Amazon reached the highest levels seen in more than a decade.
Other AI-focused conservation groups have run into similar issues. Global Fishing Watch uses machine learning models to identify vessels that turn off GPS systems to avoid detection; they’re able to predict the type of ship, the kind of fishing gear it carries, and where it’s heading. Ideally that information helps authorities around the world target illegal fishing and inform decisions to board boats for inspection at sea, but policing large swaths of the ocean is difficult. Global Fishing Watch’s tech spotted hundreds of boats engaged in illegal squid fishing in 2020, data that head of research David Kroodsma credits with increasing cooperation between China and South Korea, but it didn’t lead to any particular prosecution. Enforcement in ports, he says, is “key to making deterrence scalable and affordable.”
Back on land, the consulting company Capgemini is working with The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group, to track trails in the Mojave Desert and protect endangered animal habitats from human activity. In a pilot program last year, the initiative mapped trails created by off-road vehicles in hundreds of square miles of satellite imagery in Clark County, Nevada, to create an AI model that can automatically identify newly created roads. Based on that work, The Nature Conservancy intends to expand the project to monitor the entirety of the desert, which stretches more than 47,000 square miles across four US states.
However, as in the Amazon, identifying problem areas only gets you so far if there aren’t enough resources to act on those findings. The Nature Conservancy uses its AI model to inform conversations with land managers about potential threats to wildlife or biodiversity. Conservation enforcement in the Mojave Desert is overseen by the US Bureau of Land Management, which only has about 270 rangers and special agents on duty.
In northern Europe, the company Iceye got its start monitoring ice buildup in the waters near Finland with microsatellites and machine learning. But in the past two years, the company began to predict flood damage using microwave wavelength imagery that can see through clouds at any time of day. The biggest challenge now, says Iceye’s VP of analytics, Shay Strong, isn’t engineering spacecraft, data processing, or refining machine learning models that have become commonplace. It’s dealing with institutions stuck in centuries-old ways of doing things.
“We can more or less understand where things are going to happen, we can acquire imagery, we can produce an analysis. But the piece we have the biggest challenge with now is still working with insurance companies or governments,” she says.
“It’s that next step of local coordination and implementation that it takes to come up with action,” says Hamed Alemohammad, chief data scientist at the nonprofit Radiant Earth Foundation, which uses satellite imagery to tackle sustainable development goals like ending poverty and hunger. “That’s where I think the industry needs to put more emphasis and effort. It’s not just about a fancy blog post and deep learning model.”
It’s often not only about getting policymakers on board. In a 2020 analysis, a cross-section of academic, government, and industry researchers highlighted the fact that the African continent has a majority of the world’s uncultivated arable land and is expected to account for a large part of global population growth in the coming decades. Satellite imagery and machine learning could reduce reliance on food imports and turn Africa into a breadbasket for the world. But, they said, lasting change will necessitate a buildup of professional talent with technical knowledge and government support so Africans can make technology to meet the continent’s needs instead of importing solutions from elsewhere. “The path from satellite images to public policy decisions is not straightforward,” they wrote.
Labaly Toure is a coauthor of that paper and head of the geospatial department at an agricultural university in Senegal. In that capacity and as founder of Geomatica, a company providing automated satellite imagery solutions for farmers in West Africa, he’s seen satellite imagery and machine learning help decision-makers recognize how the flow of salt can impact irrigation and influence crop yields. He’s also seen it help settle questions of how long a family has been on a farm and assist with land management issues.
Sometimes free satellite images from services like NASA’s LandSat or the European Space Agency’s Sentinel program suffice, but some projects require high-resolution photos from commercial providers, and cost can present a challenge.
“If decision-makers know [the value] it can be easy, but if they don’t know, it’s not always easy,” Toure said.
Back in Brazil, in the absence of federal support, Imazon is now forging ties with more policymakers at the state level. “Right now, there’s no evidence the federal government will lead conservation or deforestation efforts in the Amazon,” says Souza. In October 2022, Imazon signed cooperation agreements with public prosecutors gathering evidence of environmental crimes in four Brazilian states on the border of the Amazon rainforest to share information that can help prioritize enforcement resources.
When you prosecute people who deforest protected lands, the damage has already been done. Now Imazon wants to use AI to stop deforestation before it happens, interweaving that road-detection model with one designed to predict which communities bordering the Amazon are at the highest risk of deforestation within the next year.
Deforestation continued at historic rates in early 2022, but Souza is hopeful that through work with nonprofit partners, Imazon can expand its deforestation AI to the other seven South American countries that touch the Amazon rainforest.
And Brazil will hold a presidential election this fall. The current leader in the polls, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is expected to strengthen enforcement agencies weakened by Bolsonaro and to reestablish the Amazon Fund for foreign reforestation investments. Lula’s environmental plan isn’t expected out for a few months, but environmental ministers from his previous term in office predict he will make reforestation a cornerstone of his platform.
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Read More »“Black Ships” and Space: Using Satellites To Combat Illegal Fishing
June 1st, 2022
Via The Interpreter, a report on the use of satellite technology to tackle China’s illegal fishing:
At the first in-person leaders’ summit of the Quad in Washington in September last year, the four member countries came forward with an ambitious space agenda. A working group was giving the task of advancing a number of key strategic areas, including the exchange of satellite data with the ambition to “protect the earth and its waters”.
Little progress on space matters was obvious in the public domain in the months following, until in the lead-up to the second in-person leaders’ summit in Tokyo this week the Financial Times reported that a new maritime initiative would emerge from the gathering. The initiative would look to curb illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific by using satellite technology to connect existing systems in the region to create a comprehensive tracking system. A US official stated that “China was responsible for 95 per cent of illegal fishing in the region”.
The Quad Leaders’ Tokyo Summit Fact Sheet details this new Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), “a near-real-time, integrated, and cost-effective maritime domain awareness picture”. It will look to harness commercially available data using existing technologies such as radio-frequency technologies. The Fact Sheet notes that due to its commercial origin, data will be unclassified, allowing the Quad to provide it to a wide range of partners who wish to benefit.
It would support the region in pushing back against the grey-zone incursions into foreign waters and the bullying of local fishing vessels.
One aim will be to identify so-called “black ships”, those vessels that turn-off usual tracking transponders to engage in illicit activity such as illegal fishing, smuggling or piracy. Fishing fleets from China in particular have increasingly troubled countries in the Indo-Pacific and similarly plundered waters around the world. In March 2021, Chinese fishing vessels were found anchored in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and in one instance had rammed and sunk a Filipino fishing vessel. Sparking outrage from Ecuador, Chinese fleets have and been tracked to as far as the Galapagos and also stand accused of using “football stadium-style lighting” to plunder fisheries in shared waters between North Korea, Japan, and Russia.
The proliferation of earth observation and reconnaissance satellites make it now viable to track vessels that have turned off their transponders. As of 2022, there is an estimated to be about 5,700 operating satellites in space, with more are coming. In just the last year, more than 1,700 spacecraft and satellites went into orbit via 133 successful launches.
The IPMDA initiative would provide both environmental and security benefits to the region. Identifying China’s fleets would assist in levying faster attribution to their actions – it would support the region in pushing back against the grey-zone incursions into foreign waters and the bullying of local fishing vessels. Chinese ship have even been found not to be engaging in fishing, but instead encouraged financially to operate alongside Chinese law enforcement and military vessels to achieve political objectives in disputed waters.
The IPMDA should be strongly welcomed. It provides a substantive and a tangible action beyond the plethora of verbal commitments that emerge from other forums. It also builds on a bilateral agreements made by Quad member countries – it could also provide an avenue for integration with other countries interested in engaging with the Quad.
Another initiative announced at the Tokyo meeting was the opening of a “Quad Satellite Data Portal” that will look to aggregate links to respective national satellite data resources which can support efforts to build disaster resilience against the challenges posed by climate change.
However, the Quad can do more in the space realm. An opportunity exists to act on its commitment to “consult on norms and guidelines” for space and establish a Quad commitment to ban anti-satellite tests – as unilaterally announced by the United States in April this year. This kind of commitment would support discussions at a new UN Open Ended Working Group that seek to develop new norms for behaviour in space. Such a commitment by the Quad would show the value of “minilateral” mediums which are less constricted than larger groupings.
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Read More »Unearthing A World Under The Waves
May 22nd, 2022
Courtesy of National Geographic, an article on the application of space exploration technology to marine systems in an effort to expose life on Earth – and help protect it:
National Geographic Explorer Ved Chirayath has contemplated life outside of Earth since he can remember. By five years old, he was determined to work for NASA. His steps were carefully plotted: study astrophysics, continue his education in Russia, and earn a graduate degree from Stanford University. And though he was just a boy when he first ideated the ambitious plans, he has managed to achieve it all.
Now, with a trail of astronomy achievements under his belt, Chirayath, a researcher, photographer, and inventor, is putting a spin on his childhood dreams by redirecting his focus from the skies to Earth’s ocean.
“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at space, and there’s just nothing that compares to the beauty and the wonder that is under the sea,” Chirayath says, adding that of the new worlds he’s hoped to find “ours is the coolest one I can see to the edge of our solar system.”
While collective human interest seems to have largely favored the stars, Chirayath sees the urgency in exploring planet Earth.“We have the ability to see and even redirect a potential asteroid collision,” he goes on, “but there’s a separate cataclysmic, extinction-level event happening now, and that’s climate change.”
Nature’s ability to survive under extreme conditions is evident, Chirayath points out. “I think the question that’s now coming in front of our species is ‘will humans be part of the future of life on Earth?’”
His conviction to protect the planet came after years spent in search of life elsewhere. Library texts and astronomy club peers helped him engineer his own telescopes, which, through various trials, grew larger in size. By the time he was 16, Chirayath had discovered a planet, intentionally using only amateur equipment available to the average stargazer–a consumer digital camera, which he modified with the correct sensitivity, strapped to a telescope.
By tracking changes in the brightness of a star that the planet orbited, Chirayath would prove he had indeed detected something new outside the atmosphere, roughly one-and-a-half times the size of Jupiter and traveling fast. This discovery landed Chirayath a scholarship for the next phase of living out his childhood ambitions, continuing his studies in Russia.
While earning his undergraduate degree in particle physics in Moscow, he worked as a fashion photographer for Vogue. It was a way “to do something different and help pay the bills,” Chirayath laughs, and since, his photography has splashed the pages of the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Elle.
He went on to pursue his graduate studies in aeronautics and astronautics, during which he built an instrument capable of flying on electric fields, inspired by aircrafts seen on “Star Trek.”
Blending his interest in photography and space technology, Chirayath directed his lens to the cosmos, and eventually, the ocean floor.
“I got into astronomy imaging, and that was incredibly rewarding for me because it’s like getting the chance to look into the sea, but without all of the challenges of the water,” he explains.
Through a decade-long career at NASA, Chirayath has directed the Laboratory for Advanced Sensing (LAS) at the space research giant’s Ames Center in California’s Silicon Valley. His focus has been on designing the next generation of sensing technologies to better understand this world and explore the universe beyond. This led to two major inventions: an instrument called a FluidCam, capable of seeing through ocean waves clearly in a process called fluid lensing and its more powerful successor, which Chirayath named MiDAR.
He is currently the director of the Aircraft Center for Earth Studies at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science where they use next-generation scientific platforms to explore the Earth’s atmosphere as well as ocean systems.
Since 2012, Chirayath has transitioned from searching for life elsewhere in the universe to uncovering and protecting marine ecosystems on Earth. The shift, he says, he owes in part to meeting sea exploration pioneer and fellow National Geographic Explorer, Sylvia Earle.
“She pulled me aside in the way that she does and she said, ‘you can take all of your talents and devote them to space. You can also devote them to protecting Earth, and here’s why you should do it,’” Chirayath remembers.
“I still feel like I’m doing the same science. You’re looking at dark objects and it just happens to be the telescope is no longer pointing up, it’s pointing down,” he laughs.
But the experience is dramatically different. Moving away from “doing astronomy on a cold mountaintop alone to being surrounded by life in the water” solidified Chirayath’s decision to shift gears.
Rather than look for potential life in space, he recognized the abundance of it right in front of him–begging to be stewarded.
He’s currently using drones capable of seeing through waves, applying sensing technologies he designated for space, to map and photograph shallow marine systems in hopes of inspiring appreciation for seldom-seen lifeforms and an urgency to protect them.
Using the FluidCam, Chirayath has been able to map and photograph the ocean up to 45 feet deep. With around a dozen surveying missions conducted using the technology, Chirayath estimates he’s mapped around 200 square kilometers of shallow ocean ecosystems and has high hopes for MiDAR to go deeper and further in the future.
These ocean missions also inform NeMO-Net, a video game he created in which players help NASA classify coral reefs and other shallow marine environments all over the world. He’s interested in using his technology to quantify the amount of microplastics in the ocean, identify where they’re concentrated, and help put a stop to their flow.
“It’s not entirely hopeless,” he says, marveling at nature’s resilience.
Through his expeditions, Chirayath has found everything from a diver’s rope to lost cell phones. “Anything you can imagine,” he says, can end up at the bottom of the ocean. But one of his fondest memories took place closer to the surface.
While diving in Samoa’s seas he recalls repeat visits by a baby octopus. “Every day it would kind of play hide and seek and follow me around and you could just see its intelligence,” he remembers.
“It would come say hello, then sit and go and watch for a while, then move a little bit and play a game with me. I just thought that feeling, that sense of connection with another life form, that only exists on Earth,” he says.
Appreciation for the planet and its inhabitants, Chirayath explains, is key in inspiring care for it.
“I wish everyone had the chance to go to space so you can see how dependent you are on oxygen, water, the fruit that miraculously grows on trees. The minute you get to another planet, you see this is what it could be like if you don’t preserve things,” he urges.
Ultimately, he’s invested in looking at life, in all of its forms whether on Earth or beyond. And though life may be lurking in outer space, he admits it could be very far and very rare. While exploration across the universe continues, he says there are plenty of wonders at humans’ feet.
“To better understand other life on Earth makes the whole universe seem a little bit smaller, more tangible, and connected.”
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Read More »Remote Sensing: Tracking Damage and Helping Find Solutions As Well
May 3rd, 2022
Via The Conversation, a look at how satellites over the Amazon capture the choking of the ‘house of God’ by the Belo Monte Dam – and how they can help find solutions too:
The Xingu River is revered as the “house of God” by the Indigenous people living along its Volte Grande, or Big Bend, in the Brazilian Amazon. The river is essential to their culture and religion, and a crucial source of fish, transportation and water for trees and plants.
Five years ago, the Big Bend was a broad river valley interwoven with river channels teaming with fish, turtles and other wildlife. Today, as much as 80% of the water flow is gone.
That’s because in late 2015, the massive Belo Monte Dam project began redirecting water from the Xingu River upstream from the Big Bend, channeling it through a canal to a giant new reservoir. The reservoir now powers one of the largest hydropower dams in the world, designed with enough capacity to power around 20 million households, though it has been producing far less.
Most of the river’s flow now bypasses the Big Bend, and the Indigenous peoples who live there are watching their livelihoods and way of life become endangered. Some of the most devastating effects are during the rainy season, when wildlife and trees rely heavily on having high water. The consortium of utilities and mining companies that runs the dam has pushed back on government orders to allow more water to reach the Big Bend, claiming it would cut their generation and profits. The group has argued in the past that there was no scientific proof that the change in water flow harmed fish or turtles.
There is proof of the Belo Monte Dam project’s impact on the Big Bend, though – from above. Satellite data shows how dramatically the dam has altered the hydrology of the river there.
The same satellite data can also point to potential solutions and ways that operators of the Belo Monte Dam could revise the dam’s operations to keep both its renewable power and the Xingu River flowing at the most important times of the year.
As scientists who work with remote sensing, we believe satellite observations can empower populations around the world who face threats to their resources. The fact that satellite observations of surface water of the Xingu River can be clearly tied to the construction and operation of the Belo Monte Dam offers hope that this kind of knowledge can no longer be hidden.
50 years of Earth observation
Satellites have been monitoring changes in Earth’s landscapes for 50 years, ever since the U.S. launched the first Landsat satellite in July 1972. By piecing together data from the Landsat program and other satellites, scientists can reconstruct historical patterns of change in the landscape and predict current and future trends. They can monitor forest cover, drought, wildfire damage and desert expansion, as well as river flows and reservoir operations around the world.
An example of how that data can be used to help threatened communities is the global Reservoir Assessment Tool, which was created by colleagues and one of us at the University of Washington. It monitors how much water is in about 1,600 reservoirs around the world.
Screenshot of the tool showing a map of Brazil and an example dam’s chart of water outflow.
The Reservoir Assessment Tool allows communities to track river flow changes caused by nearby dams and locate proposed dams. It currently tracks dams built before 2000. University of Washington
Dam operators already collect thorough on-site data about water flow, but their datasets are rarely shared with the public. Remote sensing doesn’t face the same restrictions. Making that data public can help hold operators to account for and protect local communities and their rivers.How satellites could pressure Belo Monte to share
Satellite monitoring can provide unprecedented insight into the operations of dams like the Belo Monte and their impact on downstream populations.
Existing satellite data can be used to monitor recent historical behavior of a dam’s operations, track the state of the river and patterns of inflow and outflow at the dam, and even forecast the likely state of the reservoir. Much of that data is easily accessible and free. For example, a tool created for the regional governing body of the Mekong River Commission is empowering communities along the river in Southeast Asia by giving them access to satellite data about water flow at each dam – data that cannot be hidden or modified by those in power.
While estimates based on remote sensing have higher uncertainty than on-site measurements, unfettered access to such information can provide local populations with evidence to argue, in court if necessary, for more water releases.
Long-term observations of dams and hydroclimate records show it is possible to revise the standard operating procedures of dams so they allow more water to flow downstream when needed. A compromise with the Belo Monte Dam could ensure that enough water flows to the Xingu’s Big Bend region while also providing hydropower benefits.
By making the impact of the Belo Monte Dam and others like it public to the world, agencies and the general public can put pressure on the dam’s operators and its investors to release more water. Public pressure will become increasingly important, as water disputes in the Amazon are expected to worsen as the planet warms and deforestation continues. Climate change will affect river flow patterns in the Amazon and likely increase droughts, leaving less water during some periods.
A tool for social justice
The Amazonian native population has declined, and dams and nearby mining operations, like those threatening the Xingu’s Big Bend region, play a role. The current Brazilian government under president Jair Bolsonaro has generally sided with wealthy landowners and industry over Indigenous peoples, making access to independent data crucial for protecting these communities.
Monitoring dams is a powerful way satellites can make a difference. Nearly two-thirds of Brazil’s electricity comes from more than 200 large and 400-plus small hydropower plants, and more large dams are expected to be built in the Amazon this decade. Many are in areas with Indigenous populations.
Remote sensing may not directly solve the problem of social injustice, but it offers the tools needed to recognize the problems and explore solutions. Being able to monitor changes in near-real time and compare them with historical operations can help maintain the checks and balances required for equitable growth.
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Read More »These New Technologies Could Transform Wildlife Conservation
March 22nd, 2022
Via The Hill, a look at how artificial intelligence, environmental DNA and networked sensors are among the technologies with the highest potential to improve wildlife conservation:
Published last December by conservation technology network WILDLABS, together with a group of non-profit and academic partners, the report is the first of its kind to provide a holistic assessment of the state of conservation technology.
The researchers surveyed 248 conservationists, technologists and academics across 37 countries over the 11 most commonly used conservation technologies, including camera traps, biologgers, acoustic monitoring and remote sensings.
Although it’s estimated that about 8.7 million species populate our planet, 86 percent of all species on land and 91 percent in the oceans are yet to be discovered. Multiple scientific studies suggest that if no action is taken, as many as half of all species could go extinct by the end of the century.
Traditional methods for tracking biodiversity, such as camera traps, which connect digital cameras to an infrared sensor to capture images and videos of animals moving past the sensor, or aerial surveys can be labor-intensive and costly. The technologies highlighted by the research could help reduce the time and resources required to detect wildlife, while increasing the effectiveness of conservation efforts.
Combining AI and citizen science to improve wildlife identification
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used to analyze large amounts of conservation data, such as camera trap, satellite and drone images or audio and video recordings, and improve wildlife identification and monitoring. The non-profit Wild Me created a cloud-based platform Wildbook, which uses computer vision and deep learning algorithms to scan millions of crowdsourced wildlife images to identify species and individual animals based on their unique patterns, including stripes, spots or other defining physical features such as scars.
Photos are added to the cloud by scientists and other volunteers, or are sourced from social media, and over time, the information about each species will grow as more citizen scientists and researchers contribute to the image catalogue. The aggregated data helps inform conservation actions, while the public can follow their favorite animals in the cloud.
Wildbook was started off to improve the tracking of whale sharks which was previously done by attaching plastic tags to the animals that had often never resurfaced. The platform has since grown into a vast database of various different species, including sea turtles, manta rays, sharks, whales, dolphins, big cats, giraffes and zebras.
In partnership with Microsoft’s AI for Earth initiative, Wildbook is hosted on its cloud computing service, Azure and is made available as an open-source software to encourage others to adopt this non-invasive method of species tracking.
A facial recognition tool for wildlife
The BearID Project is developing a facial recognition software that can be applied to camera trap imagery to identify and monitor brown bears, and inform subsequent conservation measures. This is especially important because camera traps are currently unable to consistently recognize individual bears due to the lack of unique natural markings for certain species.
So far, the team of biologists and software engineers have developed an AI system using personal photographs of brown bears from British Columbia, Canada and Katmai National Park, Alaska, which was able to recognize 132 individual bears with an 84 percent accuracy. While the camera trap system is currently under development, the project is already working with indigenous nations in Canada to implement the new tool within bear research and monitoring programs. The ultimate goal is to expand the scope of the facial recognition software to eventually apply to other threatened species.
Using AI to combat wildlife trafficking
AI can also help boost anti-poaching efforts. The software Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security (PAWS) takes in past poaching records and the geographic data of the protected area to predict poachers’ future behavior, and design poaching risk maps and optimal patrol routes for rangers.
During the first month of its field tests in the Srepok Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia, the area identified as most suitable for the reintroduction of tigers in Southeast Asia, PAWS has helped rangers double the amount of snares detected and removed during their patrols.
PAWS has since been integrated with the open-source Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART), which is already used by rangers in over 1,000 protected areas to log data collected during patrols. The integrated tool is currently available to national parks as a beta feature, and has been tested across Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Kenya, Malaysia, Mozambique and Zambia to generate poaching risk maps to assist with patrols.
Plans for the future include connecting the software to remote sensing tools such as satellites or drones to reduce the need for humans to enter the data, and expanding the scope of PAWS to predict other forms of environmental crime, including illegal logging or fishing.
Sampling environmental DNA for biodiversity monitoring
Environmental DNA (eDNA), meanwhile, enables conservationists to collect biodiversity data by extracting DNA from environmental samples, such as water, soil, snow or even air. All living organisms leave traces of their DNA in their environments through their feces, skin or hair, amongst others.
A single sample might carry the genetic code of tens or even hundreds of species, and can provide a detailed snapshot of an entire ecosystem. A recent study has revealed that eDNA could offer a more efficient and cost-effective method for the large-scale monitoring of terrestrial biodiversity. In the study, eDNA sampling detected 25 percent more terrestrial mammal species compared to camera traps, and for half of the cost.
eDNA can also help examine the impact of climate change, detect invisible threats such as viruses or bacteria, and assess the overall health of an ecosystem, which can be used to make the case for greater protection for the area.
NatureMetrics, for instance, partnered with the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative to use eDNA to assess the biodiversity of freshwater ecosystems, providing crucial data from a previously understudied region to inform rehabilitation and restoration work.
Increasing connectivity for better conservation outcomes
By enabling camera traps, tracking devices and other conservation hardware to connect online, networked sensors can offer a more comprehensive picture of animal behavior and provide instant alerts about imminent threats, aiding monitoring and patrolling efforts.
FieldKit and the Arribada Initiative aim to make the technology more accessible by developing low-cost, open-source sensor systems, while Smart Parks and Sensing Clues focus on using networked sensors to optimize protected area monitoring and management.
Most national parks don’t have basic internet or cellphone coverage as national telecommunications networks don’t typically extend to these protected areas. To provide low-power, long-range connectivity, Smart Parks deploys a range of sensors, including gate sensors, alarm systems, and animal, vehicle and people trackers, which run autonomously on solar power, consume little energy and are connected to a secure private network situated in the park itself.
The networked sensors track a wide range of information, and are able to detect human intrusions which can support anti-poaching efforts, or animal breakouts from the protected area into the community which could help preempt human-wildlife conflict.
The data is made available in or near real time in a web application, and can help inform operational decisions related to park management, wildlife conservation and local community protection, and could even be applied to ensure ranger and tourist safety.
Smart Parks technology has been deployed in protected areas around the world, and has helped contribute to the conservation of many endangered species, including orangutans, rhinos and elephants.
Gaming wildlife protection
Although it was not covered by the WILDLABS survey, games can also serve as a valuable tool to activate audiences with critical conservation issues, especially among a younger and more tech-savvy generation. Internet of Elephants, for example, develops a range of gaming and digital experiences based on scientific data to engage people who might not have otherwise held an interest in wildlife conservation.
Its products include Wildeverse, an augmented reality mobile game where players go on conservation missions in the jungle and learn how to keep apes safe, or Unseen Empire, which has turned one of the largest camera trap studies into a gaming experience. Players review real-life camera trap imagery to identify various wildlife species, and in the process learn more about the devastating impact of deforestation, poaching and other human developments on endangered wildlife, including the elusive clouded leopards.
Reducing inequalities in conservation tech
Besides highlighting the most promising tech innovations, the WILDLABS report has also identified some of the key challenges facing the conservation technology ecosystem, including competition for limited funding, duplication of efforts and insufficient capacity-building.
Importantly, the research revealed that financial and technical barriers might disproportionately affect women and people in developing countries.
“Many of the most critical conservation hotspots are also areas that are currently receiving the least support in terms of local tech capacity building,” shared Talia Speaker, WILDLABS Research Lead at WWF and co-author of the report.
Speaker warned about the problematic nature of “parachute science” which involves scientists and conservationists from high-income countries providing temporary support in developing nations and leaving after the project is finished, with no investment in local capacity-building. Without empowering local communities to use and develop conservation technologies themselves, the effectiveness and long-term sustainability of these solutions are put at risk.
To address these challenges, “the findings of this research are already feeding into a variety of WILDLABS programs,” added Speaker. “These range from fellowships that bridge the technology and conservation sectors to targeted community and capacity-building in regions like East Africa and Southeast Asia with high potential for conservation tech impact but historically limited resources for engagement with the field.”
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Read More »Using Data From Space To Develop A Global View Of Animal Movements
March 21st, 2022
Via Yale News, an article on how data from space unveil a global view of animals on the move:
A global team of researchers, including Yale scientists, is using advanced tagging to track the movement of individual animals across the world, an ambitious research project that is opening a new frontier in efforts to monitor biodiversity change and pinpoint areas for conservation intervention.
For the project, individual animals from 15 species worldwide were tagged with lightweight sensors that transmit data to the International Space Station, which then transmits the information to a single system for integration and interpretation. Since late 2021, the new technology has captured the movements of hundreds of small animals, such as blackbirds, artic terns, and even bats. Eventually they hope to track many species of reptiles, mammals, and insects.
The first findings are described March 8 in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
“For the first time, we are able to have a finger on the pulse of life worldwide,” said Walter Jetz, lead author of the study, co-director of the Max Planck-Yale Center for Biodiversity Movement and Global Change (MPYC), and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of the environment at Yale. “This now operational technology blazes the trail for a biological earth observation with animal sensors.”
Given the low cost and small tag size researchers hope to scale the effort to thousands of species and deliver data about animal lives globally in real time, said Jetz.
The project is called ICARUS or International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space, a collaboration of international scientists led by the Max Planck Society.
The effort relies upon trained volunteers to place the miniature sensors, which weigh less than one-tenth of an ounce, on individual animals. The sensors not only record GPS data but can also supply other information on conditions experienced by animals, such as temperature.
Data from the sensors are collected from the International Space Station and then transmitted to computers on the ground. While most of the species tagged so far are birds, future tagging could include many species of land animals, researchers say.
“Rather than globe-orbiting sensors capturing images of the planet’s surface for subsequent interpretation, animals, through countless individual movement decisions, seek out their preferred conditions, sensing the quality and health of ecosystems in real time,” said Martin Wikelski, co-director of MPYC, research director at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Germany, and originator of ICARUS.
For instance, scientists will not only be able to identify areas essential for survival of the animals, but identify areas where biodiversity may be threatened by human encroachment or poaching when anticipated migration routes are blocked.
With the technology now in place, the Max Planck-Yale Center is currently raising funds to purchase more sensors, which cost about $300 each, support researchers worldwide to use and scale up the system, train volunteers, and integrate information sharing platforms. The group is also negotiating with NASA and the German space agencies to place new data collection devices on satellites.
“The dream is an ongoing cohort of say 100,000 animal sentinels that help us humans measure, understand, and mitigate our changes to this planet,” Jetz said.
Movements across space and environments, home ranges and migration corridors from these new data can be explored at the website https://animallives.org, an initiative of the international Max Planck-Yale Center for Biodiversity Movement and Global Change (MPYC).
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