Drones In Conservation
December 5th, 2014
Via National Geographic, a look at the role drones can play in wildlife conservation efforts:
In the international fight against poaching, eyes in the sky could make all the difference.
But drones are expensive and hard to fly, putting them out of reach of many park managers.
For the Wildlife Conservation Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Challenge, an international competition that runs until next spring, 137 teams of students, hobbyists, and engineers from 29 countries are designing and building affordable, easy-to-use drones for the rangers of South Africa’s Kruger National Park. The goal: unmanned aircraft that can scan Kruger for poaching activity and map routes for the rangers to apprehend traffickers.
Here are five ways drones are being used on the front lines of wildlife conservation around the world. (View photos of elephants and anti-poaching efforts.)
1. Fighting Wildlife Crime
Drones already act as wildlife police, scoping out poachers in Kenya and Nepal. With a $5 million grant from Google, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has launched aerial surveillance in remote areas in Africa and Asia, where endangered species like elephants and rhinoceroses are most vulnerable to illegal trafficking.
Beyond poaching, unmanned aircraft are tackling illegal fishing, hunting, and burning. In Belize, drones are saving threatened fish populations by finding vessels that are over their catch limits, fishing without permits, or in restricted waters.
2. Getting Up Close
By getting nearer to animals than people often can, drones take intimate photographs and collect solid data. Piloted by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Vancouver Aquarium, a hexacopter drone (a remote-controlled aircraft with six rotors) recently hovered 100 feet (30 meters) above a group of killer whales off British Columbia, Canada. With images from the drone, scientists were able get a better picture of which whales were malnourished, which were pregnant, and which were likely to die.
3. Counting Populations
Getting an accurate population size not only tells park managers how much food and habitat is needed for a certain species, but also how threatened that species might be. (Read about other drone uses ranging from border patrol to crop dusting.)
In Colorado’s San Luis Valley, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service are using a retired Raven A—an aircraft once deployed in warfare that’s been replaced by sleeker combat drones—to tally sandhill cranes, a popular game bird.
“It’s a safer alternative to the fixed-wing aircrafts we’ve been using since the 1950s,” said Leanne Hanson, the USGS biologist flying the drone. “When they’re roosting at night, the cranes are not disturbed when the Raven flies over. They don’t flush off and collide mid-air.”
4. Getting the Big Picture
To understand how climate change and industrial development affect wildlife, ecologists need a birds-eye view. National Geographic grantee Jeffrey Kerby uses drones to map caribou habitat in west Greenland, tracking changes in plant cover and sea ice over time.
Designed specifically for conservation, inexpensive, ecologist-made drones have flown over northern Sumatra, Indonesia, where demand for palm oil has destroyed palm tree habitat for orangutans. The drones detected where the furry orange animals nest and where logging and forest fires were happening. (View photos of drones taking on hurricanes and fires.)
“[Surveying habitats] is a very time-consuming and labor-intensive task, requiring researchers to spend days hiking through the forest looking for these nests,” said Lian Pin Koh, an ecologist who worked in Sumatra and a pioneer in drone conservation. “A forest that would normally require one to two weeks to survey can be done in a few days using a drone.”
5. Doing Chores
Drones also assist in the unsexy tasks of conservation, including weeding and fence mending. In 2012, a Raven aircraft scanned Hawaii’s Haleakala National Park for tears in the park’s fence and for miconia, an invasive weed threatening native Hawaiian flora.
The mission wasn’t as successful as hoped—high winds made for blurry pictures. But the drone saved the rangers the trouble of navigating the park’s extreme temperatures and rugged terrain, said Matt Brown, Haleakala’s chief resource manager. The pictures were clear enough that rangers were able to identify places worth visiting to check on ripped fences and troublesome weeds.
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Read More »Joint Chinese-Brazilian Satellite Program Helps Save Amazonian Forests
December 1st, 2014
Via China Daily, a report on a joint Chinese-Brazilian monitoring program:
Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon dropped 18 percent this year, reaching the second-lowest recorded level since monitoring started in 1988, the Brazilian Ministry of Environment announced in a press briefing on Nov 24.
According to the data, an estimated 4,848 square kilometers of forests were cleared in the 12-month period to June 2014, compared with 5,891 square kilometers in the previous 12-month period.
“In the last five years Brazil registered the five lowest deforestation rates ever recorded for the Amazon,” Brazil’s Minister of Environment Izabella Teixeira said.
The rate is an estimate based on analysis of satellite images from Landsat and the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS), a series of remote sensing satellites built by Brazil and China, each covering an area up to 6.25 hectares.
The CBERS Program was born from a partnership signed between Brazil and China on July 6, 1988, and renewed in 2004, in the space technical scientific segment. The program involves the Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST), and the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), to develop a program to build and operate two advanced remote sensing satellites.
With the financial and technological resources from China and Brazil, an investment exceeding $300 million, a system of shared responsibilities was created (70 percent Chinese and 30 percent Brazilian) with the intent to implement a complete system of remote sensing internationally.
With the program, Brazil has obtained a powerful tool to monitor its huge territory by its own remote sensing satellites, looking forward to consolidate an important autonomy in this segment.
The CBERS’s family of remote sensing satellites brought to Brazil significant scientific advances. This significance is attested by the more than 35,000 users from more than 2,500 organizations registered as active CBERS users, and also by the 800,000 CBERS images, distributed at the approximate rate of 250 every day.
Images generated by CBERS satellites are used in important areas, as deforestation control and environmental monitoring in the Amazon Region, water resources monitoring, urban growth, soil occupation, education and several other applications.
It is also fundamental for large national and strategic projects, for example Brazilian Amazon Forest Satellite Monitoring Project (PRODES), which evaluates and monitors the deforestation of the sugar-cane areas.
This time, the data provided through the PRODES project is carried out by Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE).
The data will be consolidated during the first half of 2015 and submitted by the Brazilian government for external auditing. The new 2014 data represents a reduction of 83 percent in deforestation rates compared to 2004 levels, and indicate a resumption of the trend of falling deforestation in Brazil.
Deforestation rates dropped in most Brazilian states in the Amazon region. Historically marked by high rates of cleared forests, the state of Para showed a 22 percent drop in deforestation, with 1,829 square kilometers of cleared forest recorded in the 12 months to June 2014, compared with 2,346 square kilometers recorded in the previous 12 months. The most significant reduction was registered in the state of Maranhao where the rate of deforestation fell by 39 percent. Increases were registered only in the states of Roraima (37 percent) and Acre (41 percent).
According to Minister Teixeira, the reduction is a result of several factors including the work of enforcement teams and a task force for the environmental regularization of rural properties, in accordance with the new Forestry Code.
The new numbers bring Brazil closer to meeting its voluntary climate change mitigation targets established under the National Policy on Climate Change, aimed at reducing projected greenhouse gas emissions by between 36.1 and 39.6 percent by 2020.
“All the work on Brazil’s climate agenda is being carried out,” said Minister Teixeira.
The 20th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP20) starts next week, in Lima, Peru, where representatives from 190 countries will discuss new reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions.
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