Biodiversity – At a Glance
Biodiversity was a term that first appeared in a publication (and also book) in 1988 when entomologist E.O. Wilson at Harvard University used it as a title.
Earth is estimated to be home to about 8.7 million eukaryotic species (with 86% of land species and 91% of marine species yet undiscovered). Other estimates put it at one trillion species when including microbial, plant and animal species!
Although estimates vary significantly , up to 150 species could be lost every day! Of 177 mammals where there is more data , all have lost at least 30% of their geographic ranges and over 40% have experienced population declines.
One million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction (many within decades), more than ever before in human history ( IPBES Global Assessment ).
Some posit that a sixth mass extinction event is currently underway since the >3.5 billion years that life has existed on earth.
Wildlife, and biodiversity in general, are increasingly under threat from a variety of anthropogenic activities, including habitat loss resulting from deforestation, degradation, and land conversion to agriculture and settlements, as well as climate change-induced changes to native habitats. Poaching, especially of charismatic megafauna, is also leading to the endangerment and extinction of many species. For example, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists 32,000 species that are threatened with extinction, including 26% of all recorded mammals, 41% of recorded amphibians, and 14% of recorded birds.
A million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction (many within decades), more than ever before in human history ( IPBES Global Assessment ).
Global Assessment Animation from GlobalGoalsUN on Vimeo.
Sensors are being used to track poachers. Poaching has decimated the African black rhinoceros' population and place 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 with WWF's assistance. Cameras can detect heat from animals and people up to 3 KM away. Images from fixed mountain cameras are displayed to a control room where operations know where to deploy park rangers. FLIR cameras have caused poaching incidents to drop in Nakuru, Kenya after poachers saw the camera and heard stories of arrests.
Globally, more than a billion birds die each year when birds strike electrical powerlines where if the audio is recorded artificial intelligence would be high suited and economical. Marc Travers, a conservation biologist, wanted to know how many birds were dying in Kauai, Hawaii, especially two birds called Newell’s Shearwater and Hawaiian Petrels. An initial evaluation with 600 hours of audio bird recording detected automatic bird strikes from an AI company. From 2011, when the project was initiated, the total number of audio recordings is 75,000 hours. The results suggested that the total number of bird strikes is between the high hundreds and low thousands . To mitigate the impact, he worked with the power company to test preventative measures such as lowering the power line, attaching blinking LED devices, or shining lasers between power poles.
Camera traps have been used extensively 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 haven’t 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.
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.
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). Researches and development agencies have been using drone technology to conduct aerial surveys of water and land resources that support vital ecosystems. Drones are becoming more and more versatile , allowing the users to attach a number of different sensors such as high-resolution and thermal cameras that are particularly useful for studying wildlife. By taking highly 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 to study the abundance and behavior of the fauna and helps monitoring critical ecosystems all this using a fairly low-cost approach.
The ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) is an international initiative of real-time biodiversity monitoring at a global scale by track 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 disease. Study data has the option to be open where it will be hosted at the MoveBank data repository website .
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 20,000 users from universities, government agencies, other research groups, and conservation agencies. As of March 2020, there have been 2.4 billion posted locations, 3.2 billion non-location events, and 989 taxa from 7,662 studies.
Knowledge repositories work as online databases that systematically capture, organize and categorize knowledge-based information. Cataloging and tracking plant and animal species is crucial to understanding the challenges the wildlife is facing and how to address them to better design conservation strategies.
One of the most prestigious organization is BirdLife International a partnership of conservation organizations that work to protect birds and preserve their habitats and global biodiversity. Thanks to its worldwide recognition as a leader in bird conservation, they have been developed a data-driven dynamic that allows them to get feedback from projects on the ground in important sites and habitats. This translates into a curated data repository that allows researches and stakeholders to learn more about birds and critical habitats and how they are being affected by our activities. They have identified and mapped all the Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) and have developed an exhaustive database of all bird species to monitor their current status and their progresses.
Do not miss their data portal where you will find interactive databases and you will be able to use multiple tools to learn more about bird wildlife.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international network and data infrastructure funded by state members that partnered to gather, curate and share scientific data on biodiversity. Its mission is to facilitate free and open access to biodiversity data making it accessible via the internet and using web services, to underpin sustainable development. They work consist of providing data-holding institutions with common standards and open-source tools so they can share information about the species around the world. The information collected derives from many sources, ranging from museums to geotagged smartphone photos.
The ICUN’s Red list , is the world’s most comprehensive source of information on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species. It is a critical indicator of the health of the world’s biodiversity.
Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT), established in 2010, is a subscription-based service that allows users to perform a basic screening of biodiversity areas. Data comprises three major global databases: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, World Database on Protected Ares, and World Database Key Biodiversity Areas. Using an interactive map allows decision-makers an efficient method to screen and assess potential investments, risks, the potential risk associated with the sourcing of raw material and manage biodiversity risk.
DEC-Global Terrestrial Biodiversity Database
Conservation efforts worldwide are often hindered by limited information on critical ecosystems and biodiversity. To bridge this data gap, the World Bank recently developed an innovative, open access Terrestrial Biodiversity database. The database was constructed by integrating comprehensive information from overlapping habitat maps of 6,532 amphibians, 5,435 mammals, 4,291 reptiles, and 11,126 birds. These authoritative habitat maps represent all known and catalogued species in each area from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Birdlife International, as well as information on 827 distinctive ecoregions from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) covering the entire terrestrial world. The database provides 36 intuitive biodiversity measures for each square kilometer of global territory, with rapid online access to 57 billion data cells. ( World Bank).
With the primary goal of connecting people to nature, through crowdsourcing the iNaturalist is an online social network. where people share information on biodiversity to increase their knowledge on nature, its services also as a collaborative tool for species identification system and an organism recording tool, the tool can be accessed both smartphones and computers with internet access.
Ancient tracking skills use to identify animals by understanding their footprint. Today, we directly monitor endangered species using radio telemetry, marking the animal with a tag or close observations. WildTrack Footprint Identifying technology uses a digital image of footprints and artificial intelligence to identify the species, age, and sex levels.
Recent advances in technology offer wildlife managers, scientists, and conservationists' new ways of undertaking wildlife management and conservation that address some of the most significant challenges to wildlife management, including, in the developing country context, limited resources with which to monitor and protect animals in the wild. Technologies such as remote sensing and satellite imagery, remote control video and photography, gps-enabled smart trackers for animals, acoustic monitoring, and crowd sourcing conservation to name a few. The embedded e-book elaborates how these technologies are being use through case studies.
Solutions to have fish migrate upstream do not have to cost millions of dollars. In Florida, scientists were trying to use conservation locking to lure Alabama shads to the same navigation locks as ships use. To get shad to use the lock, they generated the sound of running water where the only hardware requirements are a PVC pipe, a home water pump, and water. This easy fix allowed the shad population to get past the dam reached 250,000 from 10,000 within 2-years.
Restoration requires thinking outside the box and look at other fields on how they solve their challenges. Scientists at the USDA, Oregon State University, and The Nature Conservancy determined the proper additives to add to the soil but need a better method to combine them. A commercial pasta machine made ravioli seed pellets with a 70 percent better survival chance than scattered seeds. The pellets have a coating that provides better protection and optimal germination conditions.
In arid desert land in the western United States, it is challenging to restore native plants such as sagebrush bunchgrass. The reproduction rate is low for perennials, cheatgrass, an annual invasive species that spreads quickly, consumes a lot of water, and is used as fuel during the fire season. Cheatgrass repopulates soon after the fire. When applying native scattered seeds broadly to the environment, there is only a 10 percent chance of success . Scientists at the USDA, Oregon State University, and The Nature Conservancy started looking for alternative methods of placing the scattered seed.
They identified the key factors preventing growth: low soil water availability, crusted soils, timing and germination, and herbicides' effects to wipe out the invasive species. After a major fire, the soil water repellency can last up to 3 years . A surfactant directly added to the seed will spread into the soil under rainfall. The soil will create increase infiltration and retention and create a microclimate for the plants to grow. Adding a surfactant increases plant survivability by 100 percent. Soil crust makes growing plants extremely difficult. Seeds clumped together are twice as likely to break up the soil and push through the soil crust. Soil germination can be delayed to the spring, allow for an increase in rainfall and optimal temperature. Carbon is added to neutralize the impact of herbicides, which are used to eradicate invasive species. Lastly, seeds would fly everywhere if the soil was rocky, or steep, or during windy conditions on flat land. A soil pillow was developed using a pasta machine with the ravioli setting creates the ideal shape and ensure optimal staying conditions.
Biodiversity protection is critical for sustainable development and new technologies offer “out-of-the-box” thinking in this regard. It is also important to consider the habitat and ecosystem context of biodiversity management beyond individual species-based approaches. For example, given the importance of forests for terrestrial biodiversity, the next section explores how technologies could also help forester innovation in managing forests globally.