Elephants Counted From Space for Conservation
January 21st, 2021
Via BBC, a report on the use of satellites in conservation:
At first, the satellite images appear to be of grey blobs in a forest of green splotches – but, on closer inspection, those blobs are revealed as elephants wandering through the trees.
And scientists are using these images to count African elephants from space.
The pictures come from an Earth-observation satellite orbiting 600km (372 miles) above the planet’s surface.
The breakthrough could allow up to 5,000 sq km of elephant habitat to be surveyed on a single cloud-free day.
And all the laborious elephant counting is done via machine learning – a computer algorithm trained to identify elephants in a variety of backdrops.
“We just present examples to the algorithm and tell it, ‘This is an elephant, this is not an elephant,'”Dr Olga Isupova, from the University of Bath, said.
“By doing this, we can train the machine to recognise small details that we wouldn’t be able to pick up with the naked eye.”
The scientists looked first at South Africa’s Addo Elephant National Park.
“It has a high density of elephants,” University of Oxford conservation scientist Dr Isla Duporge said.
“And it has areas of thickets and of open savannah.
“So it’s a great place to test our approach.
“While this is a proof of concept, it’s ready to go.
“And conservation organisations are already interested in using this to replace surveys using aircraft.”
Conservationists will have to pay for access to commercial satellites and the images they capture.
But this approach could vastly improve the monitoring of threatened elephant populations in habitats that span international borders, where it can be difficult to obtain permission for aircraft surveys.
‘Cutting-edge techniques’
The scientists say it could also be used in anti-poaching work.“And of course, [because you can capture these images from space,] you don’t need anyone on the ground, which is particularly helpful during these times of coronavirus,” Dr Duporge said.
“In zoology, technology can move quite slowly.
“So being able to use the cutting-edge techniques for animal conservation is just really nice.”
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Read More »Satellite Alerts Help Fight Deforestation In Africa
January 5th, 2021
Via Thomson Reuters Foundation, an article on how satellite alerts are helping fight deforestation in Africa:
A system using satellite data to send free alerts when trees are destroyed has been linked to a significant drop in forest losses in Africa, researchers and academics said on Monday.
Deforestation dropped by an average of 18% across nine central African countries after the alerts were introduced, found a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“This is really a small revolution,” said study lead Fanny Moffette, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Now that we know subscribers of alerts can have an effect on deforestation, there’s potential ways in which our work can improve the training they receive and support their efforts,” she added in a statement.
Trees absorb about a third of greenhouse gas emissions produced worldwide, but tropical rainforests disappeared at a rate of one football pitch every six seconds in 2019, according to data published by Global Forest Watch.
The study looked at whether the alert system – launched by the Global Forest Watch monitoring project in 2016 – was affecting tree losses in 22 tropical countries in South America, Africa and Asia.
It draws on satellite images updated every eight days, and uses artificial intelligence to identify where trees are vanishing by comparing pictures. It then warns subscribers covering the area so they can investigate and take action.
Organisations signed up to the alerts include governments, wildlife officials and park authorities, as well as NGOs and local forest protectors.
They have used the data to stage extra patrols in areas shown as losing trees and to catch illegal loggers in the act, said Katherine Shea at Global Forest Watch.
Overall the risk of deforestation was 18% lower in 2016-2018 than in earlier years in the nine African countries, which included Cameroon, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
However, deforestation did not decrease overall in South American or Asian countries covered by the alerts.
The authors said similar technology already available in those areas may have lessened the impact.
They estimated the alert system is likely to have stopped between $149 million and $696 million worth of damage and economic consequences from climate change.
“These new systems are making it really easy for people to have a look and see what is going on – and then take action,” said Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science at University College London, who was not involved in the study.
“Having a free alert system to give people near real-time information is incredibly helpful.”
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