Addressing Deforestation via Remote Sensing Technology
August 18th, 2021
Via Africa News, a look at how deforestation can be mitigated using remote sensing technology:
Israeli-based Albo Climate and Mauritius-based Tembo Power are partnering on a mutually exclusive basis to produce a high-resolution carbon monitoring model of vulnerable tropical forests. The maps will help to evaluate ecosystem health carefully. Furthermore, they will monitor the areas for deforestation and generate verified high-quality carbon offsets.
The collaboration will begin by developing carbon credits from two national parks in Cameroon. Both parks are home to a diverse range of unique plants and endangered animals. This includes pangolins, hippos, leopards, black colobus, mandrills, lowland gorillas and chimpanzees. It also has numerous birds, reptiles and fish species. However, the parks face increasing threats due to logging, poaching, mining, agricultural activities and coastal infrastructure development. Thus, given current deforestation rates, the two forests may lose 6,000 hectares per year.
Jacques Amselem, CEO of Albo Climate, commented: “We are thrilled to be partnering with Tembo, a key leader in developing clean energy and conservation projects across sub-Saharan Africa. Combined with our unique deep-learning, satellite-based approach to carbon credit quantification and verification, we see the potential for true impact at scale across the continent.”
The expected income from the carbon offset projects will involve maintaining the park’s boundaries. It will also include expanded support of ranger services and surveillance systems by the forest management of Cameroon. In addition, the generated income will go to supporting local communities.
Furthermore, Albo Climate and Tembo will further collaborate on additional conservation projects across East and Southern Africa. This strategic partnership will foster a robust and widely applicable remote-sensing carbon model usable in Africa’s array of tropical forests. Tembo Power’s founder, Raphael Khalifa, explained: “Tembo’s goal is to position our subsidiary Tembo Climate in full compliance with the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets led by Mark Carney and Bill Winters, advocating for the extensive use of technology to address global warming”. He added that they were glad to bring Albo’s cutting edge approach to the African continent.
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Read More »In Sri Lanka, Biologists and Divers Build a Facebook for Sea Turtles
August 15th, 2021
Via Mongabay, an article on an initiative in Sri Lanka to identify individual marine turtles in the island’s waters which uses photos taken by recreational divers to build up a database based on their unique facial patterns:
The Polhena reef and the surrounding shallow seas in southern Sri Lanka are home to a number of marine turtles that stay there year round. Randunu Dimeshan, a managing partner at the Polhena Diving Center who frequently swims in the area with his diving clients, has frequently encountered these turtles and been able to identify a few individuals from notable physical features such as a scar on a flipper or a damaged carapace.
Meanwhile, Chathurika Munasinghe, a marine biologist at the Ocean Conservation and Education Alliance (OCEA), had recently returned from a research project in the Maldives armed with a special set of knowledge and skills: identifying sea turtles based on photo identification.
Dimeshan met Munasinghe during a discussion of underwater cleanups, and this gave rise to the idea of setting up a similar citizen-science initiative in Sri Lanka. After preparations, the pair launched the Sri Lanka Turtle ID project in August 2019, several months before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
“Turtles have specific facial scale patterns that are unique to each individual,” Munasinghe told Mongabay. “Just like fingerprints [on humans], the facial scale patterns can be used to identify turtles.”
To build up this database of turtle mug shots, the researchers needed, well, mug shots: clear photographs of both sides of the face and, optionally, an image of the shell. They worked with dive centers to get the latters’ clients to take photos during dives. These photos can be uploaded to the Turtle ID project website, where special software is able to pick up facial patterns and compare them with patterns from already identified individuals stored in the database. If the facial pattern is new, the photo contributor is given the chance to name the new individual.
Facial identification
The Turtle ID project has so far identified 18 hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) and three green turtles (Chelonia mydas), all of them female. Of the seven marine turtle species found around the world, five can be observed in Sri Lankan waters. The olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) is the most common, but these are mostly found farther out in the open ocean.
“The hawksbill turtles stay closer to the coral reefs as they prefer to feed on sponges that are mostly found in association with coral reefs,” Munasinghe said. “These are the areas where most of the researchers and recreational tourists dive, so the chances of encountering hawksbill is higher.”
Dimeshan said they’ve put a name on all of the identified turtle faces. Tammy was the first to be identified and was named after the nickname of a mutual friend of the project founders. Some of the others are Alice, Avondster, Shelah, Polly, Keyara, Olya, and Chuta.
The project allows the observer who uploads photos of a previously unidentified turtle to name it. Image courtesy of Terney Pradeep Kumara.
Creating a database of sea turtles to assess the population size of each species is the main aim of the initiative. Some of the turtles use Sri Lankan waters as feeding ground, especially where reefs abound, so learning how they use certain reefs for feeding and breeding is another project aim. The team also expects the database to shed some light on turtle migratory patterns in the long run.Munasinghe said the idea was inspired by her firsthand experience in the Maldives initiative. There, a similar project begun in 2011 has to date compiled individual records for more than 1,270 turtles, according to Marine Savers, the group running the initiative. The results indicate that the Maldivian hawksbills remain in their home reefs throughout the year, traveling only between reefs less than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) apart, while green turtles tend to use multiple reefs for feeding.
“The Sri Lankan data show that we mainly observe female and juvenile turtles on the reefs, with few males of either species being spotted by our researchers,” Munasinghe said.
The technique of using facial pattern-based identification was introduced by French scientist Claire Jean of the Kélonia aquarium in the Indian Ocean island of Réunion, an observatory specializing in marine turtles.
Before then, most studies on marine turtle populations relied on capturing animals and tagging them with a marker such as a flipper tag or transmitter, which can be costly. Tags are also dif?cult to apply to turtles, as they remain in the water unless they reach beaches for nesting. So almost all physical tags are generally applied to nesting females. The photo identification method is both more cost effective and avoids putting the animals under any stress, Jean wrote in a 2010 paper.
Turtles get unique IDS
The Sri Lanka Turtle ID project uses open-source software called I3S pattern at its back end, employing machine identification of the turtles. The process is simple: reference points are first taken at the tip of the nose, the inner edge of the eye, and the furthest scale. The software then outlines the other identification zones and automatically selects 35 points within the zones as identification marks. Once this is completed, the program shows which turtles have the closest match based on the identification marks, and a user can either mark it as a previously identified turtle or a new individual.
The same technique can be used to identify individuals from other species, including whale sharks based on spot patterns.The technology is also thought to have the potential to identify large rays.
Many of Sri Lanka’s reefs have resident turtles, and some local groups have started feeding them in order to habituate them for tourism purposes. Marine biologists say they disapprove of this practice. Image by Malaka Rodrigo.
Munasinghe and Dimeshan have led several introductory sessions for researchers and recreational divers, their main focus being to get dive centers to support the photo ID project.But the Turtle ID project got off to a rocky start, with COVID-19 hitting just months after its launch. In Sri Lanka, the government imposed a nationwide lockdown in early 2020, forcing the closure of dive centers and scuppering the Turtle ID project. Marine research in general has come to a halt in the year and a half since then.
In recent months, however, there’s been a greater sense of urgency around turtle conservation in Sri Lanka, following the sinking of the MV X-Press Pearl cargo ship off the western coast of the island in early June. The ship was carrying a cargo of nitric acid and plastic pellets, among other items, and was also loaded with 378 metric tons of bunker fuel. In the months since its sinking, more than 200 marine turtles have washed up dead on the beaches and in the waters in the vicinity.
Munasinghe said she’s hopeful of being able to dive soon and to update the database, with a view to contributing to turtle conservation efforts.
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Read More »Armed with Data and Smartphones, Amazon Communities Fight Deforestation
August 8th, 2021
Via Mongabay, an article on how – armed with data and smartphones – Amazon communities are fighting deforestation:
>Equipping Indigenous communities in the Amazon with remote-monitoring technology can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found.
> Between 2018 and 2019, researchers implemented technology-based forest-monitoring programs in 36 communities within the Peruvian Amazon.
Compared with other communities where the program wasn’t implemented, those under the program saw 52% and 21% less deforestation in 2018 and 2019 respectively.> The gains were concentrated in communities at highest risk of deforestation due to threats like logging and illegal mining.
Teaching Indigenous communities in the Amazon to tap on remote-monitoring technologies during forest patrols can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found.
Researchers, whose work was published July 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), implemented technology-based forest-monitoring programs in 36 communities in Loreto, the northernmost department of Peru, between 2018 and 2019. They trained and paid three representatives from each community to patrol their forests monthly and verify reports of suspected deforestation using a smartphone application and satellite data.
Compared with 37 other communities in Loreto where the program wasn’t implemented, those under the program saw 52% and 21% less deforestation in 2018 and 2019 respectively. The gains were concentrated in communities at highest risk of deforestation due to threats like illegal mining, logging, and the planting of illicit crops such as coca to manufacture cocaine, the researchers found.
The collaboration between Rainforest Foundation US (RFUS), the World Resources Institute (WRI), Indigenous leaders and independent researchers is the latest in a growing body of research that says recognizing and protecting Indigenous rights is the most effective way to preserve natural rainforests. In Latin America, studies have shown Indigenous people to be by far the best guardians of forests in the region, with deforestation rates up to 50% lower in their territories than elsewhere.
One-third of the Amazon Rainforest falls within formally acknowledged Indigenous peoples’ territories. Community-based forest monitoring programs coupled with enforcement support from local officials could save one-fifth of the 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres) of rainforest in Brazilian and Peruvian Indigenous territories likely to be lost over the next decade, RFUS estimated.
Deforestation alerts from satellite data have long been publicly available. WRI’s Global Forest Watch (GFW) tool relies on an algorithm developed by university researchers to detect changes in forest cover through satellite imagery. In Peru, the national Geobosques platform uses GFW data to issue early alerts of suspected deforestation.
However, these alerts rarely filter down to remote rainforest groups lacking reliable internet access, resulting in communities often detecting illegal deforestation activities only when they are well underway and difficult to halt.
“The whole point is to put the deforestation information into the hands of those most affected by its consequences and who can take action to stop it,” Tom Bewick, who is the Peru country director for RFUS and who was involved in the study, said in a statement.
During the two-year study, researchers hired couriers to traverse the Amazon River and its tributaries every month to deliver USB drives containing Geobosques reports of suspected deforestation to remote communities.
Trained representatives, or monitors, would then upload this information into a specialized smartphone application, which they used to navigate to the locations of forest disturbances during their monthly patrols. Where they identified cases of unauthorized deforestation, monitors would take photos as evidence and flag them to the community, which could then decide to report it to local authorities.
Monitors use the smartphone app Locus Map to identify GPS coordinates of deforestation for their regular patrols. Photo credit: Cameron Ellis
“We are helping them set up this system by which they can collect the evidence but our hope is that then we walk away,” Suzanne Pelletier, executive director of RFUS, said in a video. “They can then train others and be the model for thousands of other communities across the Amazon.”Over the two-year period, communities under the program saved 456 hectares (1,127 acres) of rainforest, preventing the release of more than 234,000 metric tons of carbon emissions at a cost of $5 a ton. This makes it slightly more expensive than the $4.30 a ton average price of nature-based, forest management carbon credits in 2019, according to data from Ecosystem Marketplace.
But while nature-based credits have traditionally been plagued by the problem of leakage — where ecosystem conservation projects, even if successful in one area, often shift deforestation to another location — the researchers observed no such displacement of deforestation for the communities in their study.
They theorized this could be due to the inaccessibility of the forests in Loreto. “In the region that we study, in the general absence of roads, most transportation occurs by boat. As a result, the areas most vulnerable to deforestation are located close to navigable rivers,” they wrote in their report. Since Indigenous communities in Loreto also tend to live along the river, community-based forest-monitoring programs increase the cost of resource extraction, they said.
A Kichwa monitor fills out a report confirming an occurrence of illegal deforestation after returning from a forest patrol. Photo credit: Melvin Shipa Sihuango
“The study provides evidence that supporting our communities with the latest technology and training can help reduce deforestation in our territories,” Jorge Perez Rubio, president of the Indigenous group Regional Organization of the People of the Eastern Amazon (ORPIO), said in a statement. ORPIO worked with RFUS and WRI to implement the forest-monitoring programs in the study.“Our network is ready to partner with Rainforest Foundation US to apply this technology-enabled model to our community forest protection initiatives basin-wide,” Gregorio Mirabal, general coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), said in a statement. COICA, which was not involved in the study, is an umbrella association for Indigenous organizations in the Amazon lowlands, of which ORPIO is a part.
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