In-situ (incl. camera traps, tags e.g., movebank, sensors e.g., Rainforest Connection, e-DNA)
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a valuable tool for inventory and monitoring in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. DNA is released into the environment when organisms secrete substances, shed skin or hair, or carcasses. By tracking eDNA, we can learn about the distribution and population of native species, including rare ones, as well as the presence of invasive species.
Camera traps have been used extensively for over a hundred years to obtain pictures of wildlife in remote areas. A camera trap is just a digital camera with a motion sensor that takes photos of any movement. Still, its usage has been monumental in wildlife research and conservation, and advocacy because of documentation power. Cameras traps provide evidence of rare animals that have not been seen in a very long time, such as the Amur leopard or a Siamese crocodile, or discover new animals such as the striped rabbit of Southeast Asia and grey faced serengi. The images are a public relations tool that informs the public on the importance of protecting wildlife and their habitat.
Wildlife radiotelemetry uses a radio that transmits VHF waves to an antenna and receiver, like a radio. This type of tracking requires that researchers be within a specific range with a radio antenna to pick up the signal from the animal. In addition, the development of miniaturized transmitters allows tracking of smaller animals since they can easily be attached without hampering their movement, as transmitters can be swallowed or placed under the animal's skin.
Light level geolocators are small devices weighing only 0.3 grams, are used to track the movement of birds that weigh more than 7 grams. They measure the level of light an animal is exposed to and use that information to determine its location. Location data is achieved by measuring the time of sunrise and sunset, which allows for calculating the animal's approximate latitude and longitude. These geolocators are used to study bird migratory patterns, providing valuable information for conservation and management efforts.
Passive Integrated Transponders, or PIT tags, are small devices that are used to track and identify wildlife animals or marine organisms without the need for a power source. Instead, they have a microchip that gets activated when it comes close to a special reader. The PIT tag reflects this signal to the reader, which then converts the signal into a unique identification number.
Sensors are being used to track poachers. Poaching has decimated the African black rhinoceros' population and placed them on the endangered species list since their population went from over 65,000 in the 1970s to under 5,400 today. In Kenya, FLIR (Forward Looking InfraRed) cameras detect thermal heat from wildlife and humans were installed at ten parks and game reserves. Cameras detect heat from animals and people up to 3 KM away. Images are displayed in a control room, allowing operations to know where to deploy park rangers. Cameras have caused poaching incidents to drop in Nakuru, Kenya, after poachers saw the camera and heard stories of arrests.
Thermal Imaging Tech Helps Protect Endangered Wildlife | WIRED
Bioacoustics is monitoring the different frequencies that animals produce. Within an intact forest, the soundscape will consist of birds, insects, frogs, mammals communicating with their species that can be extremely noisy. However, the animals do not drown the other animals out but instead transmit their communication on a slightly different acoustic frequency. Sounds are within the range of human hearing that can be recorded with normal instruments, while other sounds require an ultrasonic recorder since it is outside the range of human hearing. Many different frequencies indicate a high degree of biodiversity, while a degraded forest may have the same amount of noise but much less frequency.
Bioacoustics Reveal How Biodiversity Changes Across Borneo’s Logged Forests
The ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) is an international initiative of real-time biodiversity monitoring at a global scale by tracking migration patterns. Animals will have tiny solar pack transmitters that will send data to the International Space Station. Sensors will record where the animal is and provide information on its living conditions. Data is for conservation programs by monitoring changing wildlife and landscape connectivity and acts as an early warning system for geological events such as earthquakes and volcano eruptions. Lastly, the migration data may provide information on animal-borne diseases. Study data can be open data, where it will be hosted at the MoveBank data repository website.
Icarus initiative: Wildlife Observation from Space
Movebank is a free online publicly available platform that allows researchers to share, analyze, and archive animal movement data while still allowing users to control ownership and share their data. The data enables all researchers to confront challenges in changing climate and land use, biodiversity loss, invasive species, wildlife tracking, and infectious disease. There are currently 3,000 data owners from universities, government agencies, other research groups, and conservation agencies. As reported on the Movebank website as of January 2023, there have been 2.4 billion posted locations, 3.1 billion non-location events, and 1,025 taxa from 5,915 studies.
eBird , managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a citizen science project that allows birdwatchers to share their observations and recordings of birds, resulting in over 100 million bird sightings being contributed annually, with a 20% growth rate in participation each year. The data is freely accessible to all and is ensured to be high quality through checklists reviewed by regional experts. Additionally, eBird provides real-time information on bird habitats and alerts for when certain species are in a specific area.
iNaturalist crowdsources and maps biodiversity monitoring throughout the world via citizen science. A citizen scientist may collaborate on a particular study, network with other observers, or run a field campaign. In addition, unidentified observational data may be recognized by machine learning or is quality-checked by professionals.
GIS-based data helps track and manage invasive species, enabling real time tracking of infestations and improves management decisions that protect native species and ecosystems. iMapInvasives an online, mobile-friendly application is a resourceful tool that allows natural resource professionals and citizen scientists to report information about invasive species and ecosystems
Earth observation (satellites, drones) – e.g., Tucker/NASA mapping each tree…
Scientists have used a supercomputer, high-resolution commercial imagery, and machine learning algorithms to map the size and location of trees outside forests in the dryland regions of West Africa and the south side of the Sahara Desert. The analysis mapped the crown diameter of more than 1.8 billion trees across over 500,000 square miles. The study also found that tree size and density varied depending on rainfall and land use, which could benefit conservation efforts.
Drones
The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has soared up in the latest years. One of its applications has been monitoring wildlife in Important Biodiversity Areas (IBAs). Research and development agencies have been using drone technology to conduct aerial surveys of water and land resources that support vital ecosystems. Drones are becoming increasingly versatile , allowing the users to attach several different sensors such as high-resolution and thermal cameras that are particularly useful for studying wildlife. By taking high resolution images of the target area of interest researchers can model the changes in land cover and land use over time affecting local biodiversity. This highly detailed data also allows us to study the abundance and behavior of the fauna and helps monitor critical ecosystems all this using a low-cost approach.
Free and commercial satellites provide tools to observe and manage the resources in the ocean and the coast. Satellites, which are "eyes in the sky," have resulted in a range of new free (e.g., from NASA , ESA ) And subscription to global services to monitor observation for changes in the terrestrial and marine environment, or changes in wildlife. Satellites use the visible part of the spectrum and other wavelengths that can see through clouds, identify changes in land cover measure urbanization, monitor deforestation, measure agricultural expansion and many other parameters useful to monitor terrestrial and marine or aquatic habitat.
NASA's Global Ecosystem Dynamic Investigation (GEDI) mission is using waveform LIDAR technology to study the structure of forests from space. The instrument is on the International Space Station and uses a system of three lasers that fire 242 times per second to 53 degrees north and south latitudes. The mission's main goal is to understand how climate change and human activities are impacting ecosystem structure and dynamics. The data collected by GEDI will be used to generate a 3D structure of the forest that can be used to measure canopy height, ground elevation, canopy profile, and aboveground biomass in forests. The GEDI data will clarify how deforestation affects atmospheric CO2 concentrations, how much carbon forests will absorb in the future, and how habitat degradation impacts global biodiversity.
Meet GEDI! The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation Sensor Aboard the ISS
Sentinel-1 is the first satellite in the European Space Agency's and the European Commission's Copernicus satellite constellation. The mission is made up of two satellites, Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B ( currently inactive due to malfunction ), that orbit in the same orbital plane. Sentinel-1 is equipped with a C-band Synthetic Imaging Radar (SAR) capable of imaging down to 5 meters and covering an area of up to 400 kilometers. SAR satellites are not affected by cloud cover or lack of illumination and can collect data over a day or night, under all weather conditions. It is planned to acquire high-resolution images of coastal areas, deforestation, forest biomass and species identification and wetland monitoring.
The European Space Agency operates Sentinel-2 as part of the ESA Copernicus constellation. Twin optical high-resolution multispectral satellites flying in the same orbit but phased 180° apart are planned to have a 5-day revisit frequency at the Equator. Sentinel-2 carries an optical instrument payload that samples 13 bands where the spatial resolution ranges from 10 meters to 60 meters. Sentinel-2’s provides continuity of SPOT and Landsat-type image data by contributing to ongoing multispectral observations and are used for land cover mapping, mapping changes to phenology, computing vegetation indices and mapping aquatic vegetation.
Sentinel-3 , operated by the European Space Agency, is part of the ESA Copernicus constellation. Twin low, optical resolution multispectral satellites that are 180 degrees apart. The repeat cycle is 27-day for the altimetry, with the Ocean Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) with global coverage of less than four days and the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer with worldwide coverage of less than two days. The satellite carries three main instruments: OLCI, which has 21 spectral bands where the spatial resolution ranges from 300 meters to 1,200 meters in reduced resolution; SLSTR, which has nine bands where the spatial resolution ranges from 0.5 KM to 1.0 KM; and SAR Radar Altimeter. Sentinel-3 imagery is used to map ocean color, net primary productivity in the ocean, land cover mapping, vegetation indices and coastal water quality.
Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 , launched in 2013 and 2021, respectively, is the eighth and 9th satellite designed to continue the global space imagery acquisition program that the United States has been implementing since 1972 with the help of the Landsat series. The multispectral satellite samples imagery in 11 bands: the visible, near-infrared, shortwave infrared, thermal, and panchromatic bands. Landsat has been used to monitor deforestation, land cover mapping, invasive species, coral reef mapping, risks from insects and disease, and assessing forest health and wildlife habitat.
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is a low spatial resolution instrument that ranges from 250 meters to 1 km abroad the Terra and Aqua satellite. MODIS has 36 spectral bands and images of the earth every 1- 2 days. The Terra satellite has a descending orbit from north to south and passes over the equator in the morning. In contrast, the Aqua satellite has an ascending orbit (south to north) and passes the equator in the afternoon. MODIS has been used for land cover mapping, water quality monitoring, vegetation indices, deforestation and forest fire detection.
Subscription Services: There is an increasing trend for private sector firms offering data from private sources (e.g., high-resolution satellite images) or analytics from proprietary algorithms on free data (e.g., using machine learning) as paid subscription services for users. This Data as a Service approach will become more popular to leverage cloud service and interoperability to allow users to mix a combination of free and such subscription services for their use in visualization or further analytics to obtain insights for decision support. These currently exist for a range of earth observation (e.g. Maxar , Airbus , Planet ), such as counting wildlife and monitoring changes to the marine and terrestrial habitat, and these will invariably grow rapidly in the future.
Surveys
Interoperable Standards (e.g., OGC, open APIs (application programming interfaces))
Cloud Analytics (incl. AI/ML for camera traps etc. etc.)
Cloud Based Mapping
Warming do the planet is causing shifts in habitats, governments, conservationists, and local communities, need to monitor these changes for planning for future climate and land-use scenarios, built on google earth engine and google cloud platform, cloud-based mapping tools like Terradapt, enables stakeholders to dynamically monitor these changes in habitats that inform priority species and areas for conservation and connectivity of habitats.
Map of Life is a web-based platform that integrates biodiversity and environmental data to provide a comprehensive view of species distribution and dynamics at a global scale. The platform offers a variety of tools for education, monitoring, research, and decision-making, including tools that provide a view of biodiversity patterns such as species richness, urban projections, species habitation suitability index, biodiversity trends, and the ability to view spatial and temporal gaps in biodiversity data.
Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is a government-funded global network and data infrastructure that enables free access to data on all species on Earth. GBIF shares species records using common standards, best practices, and open-source technologies. January 20, 2023, includes almost 2.3 billion occurrence records from 80,635 datasets, including museum items, DNA bar codes, and recently recorded smartphone images.
Wildlife Insights is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to disseminate and analyze global camera trap data. The platform allows anyone to upload images of wildlife, which are then automatically identified using AI with a species accuracy assessment and filters out blank photos. Analytics on demand can include species occupancy, richness, and detection rate. Aggregating images globally provides decision-makers and researchers to efficiently monitor and share wildlife data while ensuring that information on sensitive species data is secure.
Restor connects people and projects to scientific data, monitoring tools, funding, and each other to increase the impact, scale, and sustainability restoration and conservation efforts
Modern interactive dashboards
Interactive documents (e-books, storymaps)
Evolving Approaches (VR, AR (Augmented Reality))
Augmented Reality
With Augmented Reality (AR), we can monitor and protect wildlife and their habitats, track their movement and behaviors and provide data on the health of the wildlife population, since AR enables stakeholders to overlay virtual objects on real-world settings. AR allows more accurate data collection and analysis in real-time.
Arloopa conservation awareness campaign with AR
Virtual discussions, blogs, etc.
Blogging is another way to spread awareness and persuade people to act on issues related to Biodiversity and Conservation, through the sharing of views, features, news and to share information on tools, techniques and technologies that are helping in monitoring, conservation and restoration. They also serve as a quick means for stakeholders who would otherwise not have access to reports etc. to get a quick read of current issues/hotspots. Blogs such as from sites/institutions Nature.com, Sciencedaily.com ,Conservation.com are regularly updated with information on various themes with the topic.
Competitions e.g., Hackathons
Leveraging the wisdom of the crowd, especially the youth, is a promising institutional approach globally. Across the world, various competitions including hackathons (see World Bank Lessons from Water Hackathons ), data jams, appathons, blogathons, X-prize, design and other innovation challenges are being organized to develop solutions to the most pressing Biodiversity issues of our times.