How Technology Helps Scientists Protect Giraffes
February 7th, 2024
Via Share America, a look at how solar-powered GPS tracking devices affixed to giraffes’ ears allow conservation ecologists to remotely track animals and know when giraffes have strayed from protected areas:
Technology is helping wildlife experts in Africa to protect endangered giraffes and to reintroduce them to areas where they had previously died out.
An estimated 117,000 giraffes remain in the wild, and some species are critically endangered, having suffered from illegal hunting and habitat loss, according to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. New technologies, including AI software, are helping scientists to recognize specific giraffes based on their unique spot patterns. And satellite imagery is helping conservationists identify suitable habitats for them.
“[We] get glimpses into the lives of giraffes that we previously couldn’t see,” said Michael Brown, a conservation ecologist with the foundation. “These glimpses … inform conservation management.”
Based in Namibia, the foundation and its partners protect giraffes across 40 million hectares in 21 African countries. Giraffes live in areas ranging from lush savanna to sparse desert, and from protected wildlife refuges to lands that put the animals in close contact with people.
Along with partners, including the Virginia-based Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in the United States, the foundation uses GPS (Global Positioning System) devices to track giraffes. EarthRanger, part of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a Seattle-based nonprofit, quickly transmits data to local partners, alerting them to when an animal has strayed from a protected area or stopped moving and thus may need assistance.
In August 2023, Jennifer R. Littlejohn, the U.S. Department of State’s acting assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, met with scientists working on EarthRanger in Seattle and highlighted the importance of conservationists, technologists and government working together to further use of AI and satellite imagery to solve problems facing people and nature.
The ability to recognize spot patterns, which traditionally required scores of volunteers, Brown said, helps researchers accurately count giraffe populations and better understand an animal’s behavior. U.S. researchers use similar technology to recognize North American brown bears by their facial features.
“Knowing them as individuals helps us get a much clearer picture” of how giraffes interact with their habitats, Brown said. That information helps researchers better determine where giraffe populations are likely to increase over time.
Ecologists have successfully moved giraffes to new areas, including lands where they had previously died out. Databases owned by NASA, the U.S. space agency, and by the U.S. Geological Survey provide information from satellite images to determine whether giraffes are likely to thrive. Online tools such as Google Earth also inform the analysis.
“Rapid leaps in the last decade with GPS technology and with satellite imagery,” Brown said, motivate ecologists to continue their efforts.
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Read More »Transforming Nature Conservation With The Power of Satellite Imagery
April 25th, 2023
Via Terra Daily, a look at how satellite imagery is transforming conservation:
Satellite imagery is changing conservation as we know it. By being able to take an inventory of the Earth’s surface and observe changes, we can begin to understand ecosystem dynamics in an unprecedented level of detail. Satellite imagery is already supplementing traditional conservation research methods, and in some cases is even replacing them. High-quality satellite images can be used to rapidly detect deforestation, observe mining operations, locate wildlife colonies, and even track illegal activities that are harming our planet.
Monitoring ecosystems from space using the latest Earth observation satellites allows scientists and conservationists to vastly improve the information they collect: leading to higher-quality insights, or information about areas which would otherwise be impossible to survey.For example, satellites can observe cross-border areas easily, without requiring permission from multiple civil aviation jurisdictions. They can capture large areas of the planet in one go, which can help to avoid miscounts and human errors, where the same area might accidentally be covered on multiple passes. They are of course also completely unobtrusive, meaning that there is no risk of disturbing or damaging species or habitats during the course of the surveying activities. And they can reach parts of our planet that would otherwise be inaccessible. For example, a new colony of 1.5 million Adelie penguins that had remained hidden for nearly 3,000 years was finally detected thanks to satellite imagery in 2018.
Using satellites therefore seems like a no-brainer: why wouldn’t scientists automatically choose to use them compared to other methods?
Unfortunately, it isn’t quite that simple. A laptop in the field would likely struggle to process satellite imagery due to the enormous size of the images, or would at the very least require specialist software. There are also external factors that can create a large variability in the quality of satellite imagery. Having passed the technological and financial hurdle to acquire the satellite imagery in the first place, failing to gather valuable data due to an inconveniently-placed cloud or poor lighting is extremely frustrating for the researchers.
Partnerships are key to overcoming these hurdles
Connected Conservation Foundation (CCF) brings together local people, partners and technology companies to protect wildlife and ecosystems using technology. CCF and their conservation field partners are able to use satellite imagery donated by the Airbus Foundation to explore the value of satellite imagery for a number of nature conservation projects.+ Detecting poaching incidents from space: Using Airbus’s pioneering 30cm high-resolution satellite imagery, CCF helped the team at the Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa identify a tragic poaching incident. Two rhino carcasses were detected in satellite imagery, which allowed the park rangers to ascertain the time of death and assisted them with the subsequent investigation.
+ Locating endangered species in hard-to-reach areas: CCF brought together imagery from Airbuss Pleiades Neo satellites with an AI-powered solution by technology services company NTT Ltd. to locate endangered species in hard-to-reach areas. By using satellite imagery to guide conservationists, teams can identify wildlife hotspots and map the movements of different species, even across borders. This helps to create ‘heat maps’ of species’ territories and migration which in turn enables conservationists to be able to better protect them.
+ Capturing vital ecosystem information: By mapping water resources, human settlements, grasslands and invasive plant species from Space, more informed sustainable management plans can be developed to respond to climate change and fluctuating levels of natural resources. This will better support local communities and conservation activities.
The Airbus Foundation’s next project with CCF will be taking satellite images of the extensive Lorian ecosystem for the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) in Kenya.
Together, CCF and the Airbus Foundation have secured 1,900 km2 of high-resolution satellite imagery for NRT researchers to use as they plan conservation activities. It will provide a baseline to measure ecosystem recovery over the next ten years as well as help define new protected areas, where researchers will survey and map water distribution, human settlements and flora and fauna, including invasive species.
Additionally, government agencies including Museum Kenya, Kenya University and the Kenya Wildlife Service will also work with NRT to use this imagery to plan ways to mitigate human-wildlife incidents between elephants, lions and local people. This will help establish wildlife corridors and allow communities to better coexist and thrive together.
In the face of global threats such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, wildfires, and other challenges, organisations like CCF need access to timely, accurate data. The Airbus Foundation is pleased to share satellite imagery that organisations can use to protect wildlife and their habitats, supporting their efforts to protect ecosystems, combat wildlife poaching, and reduce human-wildlife conflict.
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Read More »Five Revolutionary Technologies Helping Scientists Study Polar Bears
January 13th, 2023
Via Smithsonian Magazine, a look at how researchers are using novel technologies to study polar bears, which live in the rapidly warming Arctic:
When they’re born, polar bears are toothless and blind, and they weigh roughly a pound. But over time—thanks to lots of fat-rich milk and protection from their mother—these helpless cubs grow to become large, powerful predators that are perfectly adapted for their Arctic environment. Though temperatures can dip to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, the massive marine mammals—which live in Canada, Norway, Russia, Greenland and Alaska—stay warm with a thick layer of body fat and two coats of fur. Their huge paws help them paddle through the icy water and gently walk across sea ice in search of their favorite meal, seals.
Their size, power, intelligence and environmental adaptions have long intrigued humans living in the north, including many Indigenous communities, such as the Inuit, the Ket and the Sámi. Biologists are curious about Ursus maritimus for many of the same reasons.
“Bears are fascinating,” says B.J. Kirschhoffer, director of conservation technology at Polar Bears International. “For me, when standing on a prominent point overlooking sea ice, I want to know how any animal can make a living in that environment. I am curious about everything that makes them able to grow to be the biggest bear by living in one of the harshest places on this planet. There is still so much to learn about the species—how they use energy, how they navigate their world and how they are responding to a rapidly changing environment.”
Today, researchers and conservationists want to know about these highly specialized marine mammals because human-caused climate change is reshaping their Arctic habitat. The bears spend much of their time on sea ice hunting for seals. But as temperatures in the Arctic rise, sea ice is getting thinner, melting earlier in the spring and forming later in the fall. Pollution and commercial activity also threaten the bears and their environment. An estimated 26,000 polar bears roam the northern reaches of the world, and conservationists worry they could disappear entirely by 2100 because of global warming.
But investigating mostly solitary creatures who spend much of their time wandering around sea ice, in some of the most remote and rugged places on the planet, is expensive, logistically challenging and dangerous to researchers. For help, scientists are turning to technology. These five innovations are changing the way they study polar bears.
Sticky tracking devices
Researchers can twist three black bottle brushes into a sedated bear’s fur to attach a triangular plate equipped with a tracking device. 3M
Much of what scientists know about polar bears comes from tracking female members of the species. This is largely due to anatomical differences between the sexes: Males have small heads and thick necks, which means tracking collars can easily slip right off. Females, on the other hand, have larger heads and thinner necks.Neck collars are out of the question for males, and they’re not ideal for young bears, which can quickly outgrow the devices. Other options—like implants—require the bears to undergo minor surgery, which can be potentially risky to their health. Ear tags don’t require surgery, but they are still invasive. They’re also permanent, and polar bear researchers strive to make as minimal an impact on the bears as possible. How, then, can scientists attach tracking devices to young bears and male polar bears?
This was the challenge put to innovators at 3M, the Minnesota-based company that makes everything from medical devices to cleaning supplies to building materials. 3M is particularly good at making things sticky—its flagship products include Post-it Notes and Scotch Tape.
Jon Kirschhoffer spent his nearly 40-year career at 3M as an industrial designer, developing novel solutions to complex problems just like this one. So when B.J. Kirschhoffer, his son, started chatting about the need for a new, noninvasive way of attaching trackers to polar bears, Jon’s wheels started turning. He brought the problem to his colleagues, who set to work studying polar bear fur and building prototypes.
Crimping Device For Polar Bear Fur
One of the most promising designs draws inspiration from the human process of attaching hair extensions. 3M
In the end, they landed on two promising “burr on fur” approaches. One device uses three bottle brushes—small, tubular brushes with a long handle made of twisted metal wire that could fit inside the neck of a skinny bottle—to grab onto clumps of a sedated bear’s fur. They also have the option of applying a two-part epoxy to the bottle brushes to help hold the bear’s fur more securely. Scientists and wildlife managers can use the brushes to firmly attach a triangular plate that contains a tracking device between the animal’s shoulder blades. In tests, the researchers have sedated the animals before attaching the trackers, but some zoos are training their bears to accept the tags while fully alert.“It’s like a burr: You twist and entangle the fur in the bottle brush, then bend over the handle so it doesn’t untwist,” Jon says. “We do that on three sides and put a little protective cap over it so it’s less likely to get snagged on willows and brush and other things that bears walk through.”
The other option draws inspiration from the process hair stylists use to attach hair extensions to their human clients’ heads. This pentagonal design involves extending a loop of a fishing leader down through five metal ferrules, or tubes; lassoing some hair on a sedated polar bear; and pulling it back through. Scientists can then use pliers to squeeze and crimp the hair in place.
Researchers are testing both devices on wild bears in Churchill, Manitoba, and on bears housed at zoos and aquariums. The verdict is still out on which option is better, and Polar Bears International expects the testing phase to last several more years. Ultimately, by making design modifications based on their experimental learnings, they hope to tweak the devices so they will stick to the bears’ fur for at least 270 days, which is the lifespan of the tracking devices themselves.
But even if they can’t get the sticky devices to stay attached to bears for the full 270 days, the gadgets will still be useful for gathering some amount of data on males and young bears, which is currently lacking. They’re also promising for short-term tracking situations, such as “when a bear has entered a community, been captured and released, and we want to monitor the animal to ensure it doesn’t re-enter the community,” says B.J.
“Bear-dar” detection systems
Radar Tower For Detecting Polar Bears
Scientists are testing several radar systems designed to detect approaching polar bears. Erinn Hermsen / Polar Bears International
When humans and polar bears meet, the encounters can often end in tragedy—for either the bear, the human or both. Conflict doesn’t happen often, but global warming is complicating the issue. Because climate change is causing sea ice to form later in the fall and melt earlier in the spring, the bears are fasting longer. And, with nowhere else to go, they’re also spending more time on land in the Arctic, where an estimated four million humans live. Some are even seeking out easy calories from garbage dumps or piles of butchered whale remains.Scientists counted 73 reports of wild polar bears attacking humans around the world between 1870 to 2014, which resulted in 20 human deaths and 63 human injuries. (They didn’t include bear outcomes in the study.) After analyzing the encounters, researchers determined that thin or skinny adult male bears in below-average body condition posed the greatest threats to humans. Female bears, meanwhile, rarely attacked and typically only did so while defending their cubs.
To prevent human-bear encounters, scientists are developing early-warning radar detection systems they’ve nicknamed “bear-dar” to help alert northern communities when a bear is getting close. A handful of promising prototypes are in the works: Some teams of researchers are building the systems from scratch, while others are riffing off technologies that are already in use by the military. They all use artificial intelligence models that may be able to discern approaching bears. Scientists have tested the systems in Churchill, Manitoba, and are now tweaking the A.I. models to be more accurate.
“We’ve already established that the radar sees everything,” B.J. Kirschhoffer says in a statement. “Being able to see is not the problem. Filtering out the noise is the problem. … Ideally, we can train them to identify polar bears with a high degree of certainty.”
As the systems are still in testing, they do not alert members of the community or professional responders. But, eventually, communities may develop custom responses depending on the alerts, says Kirschhoffer.
“For instance, if a bear-like target is identified 200 meters out, send a text message,” he says. “If a bear-like target is identified 50 meters out, blink a red light and sound a siren.”
Synthetic aperture radar
Scientists are highly interested in polar bear dens—that is, the cozy nooks female bears dig under the snow to give birth to cubs—for several reasons. Denning, which occurs each year from December to early April, is the most vulnerable time in the life of youngsters and mothers. Though they’re accustomed to covering huge amounts of territory to find prey, mother bears hunker down for the entire denning period to protect their cubs from the Arctic elements and predators. Studying bears at den sites allows researchers to gather important behavioral and population insights, such as the body condition of mothers and cubs or how long they spend inside the den before emerging.
Scientists also want to know where dens are located because oil and gas companies can inadvertently disturb the dens—and, thus, potentially harm the bears—when they search for new sources of fossil fuels. If researchers and land managers know where polar bear dens are located, they can tell energy companies to steer clear.
But finding polar bear dens on the snowy, white, blustery tundra is a lot like finding a needle in a haystack. Historically, scientists have used low-tech methods to find dens, such as heading out on cross-country skis with a pair of binoculars or using dogs to sniff them out. But those options were often inefficient and ineffective, not to mention rough on the researchers. For the last few years, scientists have been using a technology known as forward-looking infrared imagery, or FLIR, which involves using heat-sensing cameras attached to an aircraft to detect the warm bodies of bears under the snow. But FLIR is finicky and only works in near-perfect weather—too much wind, sun or blowing snow basically renders it useless. What’s more, if the den roof is too thick, the technology can’t pick up the heat inside. Tom Smith, a plant and wildlife scientist at Brigham Young University, estimates that aerial FLIR surveys are 45 percent effective, which is far from ideal.
But a promising new technology is on the horizon: synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Affixed to an aircraft, SAR is a sophisticated remote-sensing technology that sends out electromagnetic waves, then records the bounce back, to produce a radar image of the landscape below. SAR is not constrained by the same weather-related issues as FLIR, and it can capture a huge swath of land, up to half a mile wide, at a time, according to Smith.
Scientists are still testing SAR, but, in theory, they hope to use it to create a baseline map of an area during the summer or early fall, then do another flyover during denning season. They can then compare the two images to see what’s changed.
“You can imagine, with massive computing power, it goes through and says, ‘These objects were not in this image before,’” says Smith.
Artificial intelligence
Getting an accurate headcount of polar bears over time gives scientists valuable insights into the species’ well-being amid environmental changes spurred by climate change. But polar bears roam far and wide, traveling across huge expanses of sea ice and rugged, hard-to-reach terrain in very cold environments, which makes it challenging, as well as potentially dangerous and expensive, for scientists to try to count them in the field. As a result, researchers have taken to the skies, looking for the bears while aboard aircraft or via satellites flying over their habitat. After snapping thousands of aerial photos or satellite images taken from space, they can painstakingly pore over the pictures in search of bears.
A.I. may eventually help them count the animals. Scientists are now training A.I. models to quickly and accurately recognize polar bears, as well as other species of marine mammals, in photos captured from above. For researchers who conduct aerial surveys, which produce hundreds of thousands of photos that scientists sift through, this new technology is a game-changer.
“If you’re spending eight hours a day looking through images, the amount of attention that a human brain is going to pay to those images is going to fluctuate, whereas when you have a computer do something … it’s going to do that consistently,” Erin Moreland, a research zoologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Alaska Public Media’s Casey Grove in 2020. “People are good at this, but they’re not as good at it as a machine, and it’s not necessarily the best use of a human mind.”
To that same end, researchers are also now testing whether drones work to capture high-resolution images and gather other relevant data. Since they don’t require onboard human pilots, drones are a safer, more affordable alternative to helicopters; they’re also smaller and nimbler, and tend to be less disruptive to wildlife.
Treadmill and swim chamber
Researchers want to understand how much polar bears exert themselves while walking across the tundra or swimming through the Arctic Ocean. To get a handle on the marine mammals’ energy output on land, Anthony Pagano, a biologist with the United States Geological Survey, built a special heavy-duty polar bear treadmill. Study collaborators at the San Diego Zoo and the Oregon Zoo then trained captive polar bears to walk on it. Using shatterproof plastic and reinforced steel, the team constructed a 10-foot-long chamber that encased a treadmill typically used by horses. The 4,400-pound contraption also included a circular opening where researchers could tempt the bears into walking with fish and other tasty treats.
As a follow-up to the walking study, Pagano and biologists at the Oregon Zoo also measured the energy output of the bears while swimming. To do so, they developed a polar bear-sized swim chamber, complete with a small motor that generated waves to simulate the conditions the bears might encounter in the ocean.
Together, the two technologies helped scientists learn that bears expend more energy swimming than walking. Polar bears are good swimmers, but they’re not very efficient ones, thanks to their relatively short arms, their non-aerodynamic body shape and their propensity for swimming at the water’s surface, where drag is greatest. In a world with shrinking sea ice, polar bears likely need to swim more to find food and, thus, will burn precious calories, which could cause them to lose weight and lower their chances of reproducing—decreasing the species’ chances of survival.
Together, these and other technologies are helping researchers learn how polar bears are faring as the climate evolves. This knowledge, in turn, informs conservation decisions to help protect the bears and their environment—and the health of the planet more broadly.
“We need to understand more about how the Arctic ecosystem is changing and how polar bears are responding to loss of habitat if we are going to keep them in the wild,” says B.J. Kirschhoffer. “Ultimately, our fate is tied to the polar bear’s. Whatever actions we take to help polar bears keep their sea ice habitat intact are actions that will help humans protect our own future.”
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Read More »How Tracking Technology Is Transforming Our Understanding of Animal Behavior
January 4th, 2023
Via The Conversation, a look at how tracking technology is transforming our understanding of animal behavior:
Biologging is the practice of attaching devices to animals so that scientific data can be collected. For decades, basic biologgers have been used to relay physiological data including an animal’s heart rate or body temperature. But now, new technologies are affording scientists a more advanced insight into the behaviour of animals as they move through their natural environment undisturbed.
The tracking of individual animals also provides access to remote locations that are difficult to study. In particular, science has only a limited knowledge of marine environments – the surface of the moon has been mapped and studied more extensively than our own ocean floor.
But researchers have recently fitted small video cameras to the dorsal fins of tiger sharks in the Bahamas. The footage led to the discovery of the world’s largest known seagrass ecosystem, and has extended the total known seagrass coverage by more than 40%. Seagrass ecosystems are important carbon stores, home to thousands of marine species, and can provide a buffer against coastal erosion. Conservationists are now better placed to protect these important ecosystems as a result of biologging.
Here are four more examples of humans working with animals – from dragonflies and ospreys to hedgehogs and jaguars – to improve our understanding of wildlife behaviour and numbers around the world, and how best to protect them.
1. Hedgehog protection
Rural hedgehog populations in Britain declined by up to 75% between 1981 and 2020. Conservationists require more information on their movement and behaviour to inform future efforts to protect this endangered species.Between 2016 and 2019, 52 hedgehogs were fitted with GPS trackers programmed to record the location of the hedgehog every five minutes throughout the night. The tracking data indicated that male hedgehogs travelled longer distances than females, and would often move several kilometres to find a mate. Male hedgehogs are therefore more vulnerable to road mortality. Research like this can inform strategies such as building wildlife tunnels that enable hedgehogs to bypass busy roads.
Tracking data has also revealed that rural hedgehogs travel further each night in search of food than urban hedgehogs. This highlights the importance of urban gardens as a hedgehog habitat, and supports the use of hedgehog tunnels to connect gardens.
These studies used GPS trackers that store data on the device, meaning each animal had to be recaptured to retrieve the information. This is fine for animals such as hedgehogs that do not roam far, but it can be a challenge when studying migratory animal species.
2. Osprey migration
Scientists studied birds prior to biologging by fitting them with wing tags so they could be identified individually from a distance. But information about their location relied on researchers repeatedly finding the same bird.Ospreys are migratory birds of prey that feed primarily on fish. They were persecuted into extinction in the UK in the 1800s, before being reintroduced to England in 1996. However, the absence of accurate data regarding ospreys’ movement has made it difficult to identify their wintering grounds and migratory stopover sites.
Two UK conservation charities, the RSPB and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, began osprey satellite tracking projects around 2007. Data on an osprey’s location, orientation, altitude and speed has provided researchers with information about their migration routes and wintering grounds.
Such information has aided measures to protect ospreys throughout their migratory range. These include education programmes to inspire young conservationists in the UK and Gambia, countries at opposite ends of an osprey’s migratory pathway.
Biologging has also unveiled peculiarities in the behaviour of ospreys. For example, one bird was found to have hitched a ride on cargo ships during its annual migration.
3. Flying insects
Biologging devices are generally large to account for a battery. So while attaching them to larger animals is relatively straightforward, studying insects has required the development of miniature devices.Insects are among the world’s smallest flying migrants – monarch butterflies and green darner dragonflies migrate south from Canada to the US each year. Researchers fitted small automated radio transmitters (weighing less than 300mg) to these insects.
Their movement over long distances was then monitored through a network of more than 1,500 automated receiver towers spread across the American continent. The towers record the biologgers within a 10km proximity.
The data revealed that the insects travelled distances of up to 143km each day at speeds of over 20 metres per second. This exceeded known daily travelling distances for the darner dragonfly. Warmer temperatures and wind assistance also allowed the insects to migrate at a faster pace.
4. Tracking from space
The Icarus project involves researchers attaching transmitters to a variety of animal species. These transmitters send data to a receiver in space which then transmits the information back to a ground station, from where it is sent to relevant researchers.This reduces the delay for data processing and device relocation, and allows the immediate availability of behavioural and physiological data on a global scale. Since March 2021, the project has tracked the movements of 15 species worldwide, including the Saiga Antelope, fruit bats and Jaguars.
The information can be used to predict the impacts of environmental change. Identifying which habitat types are selected or avoided can reveal the most productive habitats for endangered species. The behavioural response of animals to ecological changes, such as a warmer Arctic, can also be monitored.
Data from the project may allow scientists to use certain animal species to predict disaster events. For example, research has found that some animals exhibited behavioural changes immediately before Japan’s 2011 earthquake.
Icarus researchers also suggest that disease transmission hotspots could be identified using biologgers, which could help to map the spread of viruses.
Biologging has allowed for the protection of various animal species and environments by widening our knowledge of animal behaviour. But remote animal tracking may also allow humanity to be better protected from natural disasters in the future.
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Read More »Geospatial Technology Helps In The Fight Against Environmental Crimes In Brazil
November 23rd, 2022
Via Planet.com, a look at how Geospatial Technology Helps In The Fight Against Environmental Crimes In Brazil at how geospatial technology is helping fight environmental crime in Brazil:
The size and complexity of the Brazilian territory, especially in the Amazon region, has historically plagued institutions, like the country’s Federal Police, with challenges around effective response to environmental crimes and illicit activities. To improve their operations, these agencies needed a remote sensing dataset that would complement their field work, allowing them to take timely action around environmental degradation in the region like illegal mining and deforestation, drug trafficking, and unauthorized fires.
Enter: The Brasil MAIS Program. This project is one of the Ministry of Justice and Public Safety’s (MJSP) strategic initiatives and is the largest remote sensing operational project in Brazil. It grants all public agencies access to RedeMAIS (Brasil MAIS Program Network), an ecosystem for sharing data, information, and unique knowledge of the entire national territory which allows for more precise and effective action. Through this project, agencies are able to gain access to Planet’s daily satellite imagery and change-detection alerts from SCCON.
With the implementation of SCCON Platform alerts powered by Planet data, the Brazilian Federal Police has made great strides in preventing illicit activities in one of the most remote regions of the world. With this data, they have been able to reduce money laundering and corruption, protect and safeguard their community, and support Federal government decision making. Today, we’re pleased to share a few highlights from the program:
With its use of Planet satellite data and SCCON’s automated change detection, the project has collected over $ 1.9 billion / R$ 9.6 billion from fines, seized goods, and the freezing of assets since 2020.
Over 3,300 public agents were mobilized in over 120 joint operations, using satellite imagery and data from the project.
To date, over 270 institutions and 26,000 users have direct access to the data in one platform, including geoservices, dashboards and reports. This cohesion promotes broad participation and support for decision-making within the Federal Government.
Accessible from anywhere in the country, the Brasil MAIS Program is fostering greater collaboration across public agencies looking to enact lasting change in the region. Planet is proud to support this work with our partner in Brazil, SCCON. To read the full report, download our comprehensive case study here.
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Read More »New Satellite Will See Water’s Big Picture
November 18th, 2022
Via Circle of Blue, a report on a new satellite that will fill global gaps in key water data:
By foot, horse, and canoe, European explorers centuries ago undertook years-long expeditions to document the length and breadth of major rivers.
Today, satellites make the first pass of discovery. Though rivers meander and melting glaciers birth new lakes annually, the world’s major drainages have largely been mapped.
Yet one fundamental dimension remains largely a mystery: the rise and fall of water bodies globally. Accurately measuring, at low-cost, the weekly changes in rivers, lakes, and wetlands would allow scientists to observe how much water moves through them. Land-based gauges do some of this work. But where gauges are scarce — Alaska, Africa, Asian headwaters — these numbers are inaccurate or unknown. The answer holds implications for flood prediction and drought response — even international diplomacy.
The vessel for this new knowledge is the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite, a joint venture between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatial, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the UK Space Agency. Planned for nearly two decades, the mission is scheduled to launch on December 12 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, in California.
“It’s going to be completely unprecedented,” said Tamlin Pavelsky, who is in charge of the mission’s water science team.
Satellites belong to a field of observational science called remote sensing. Having eyes in the sky, either on airplanes or spacecraft, is transforming environmental monitoring and management. Reporters used satellite images from companies like Maxar and Planet Labs to pinpoint water systems in Ukraine that were damaged by Russian airstrikes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is leading a coalition to develop a satellite-based program to detect toxin-producing algae in lakes. Instruments installed on the International Space Station are refining weather forecasts by measuring water vapor in the atmosphere and water held in clouds. Scientists are exploring satellite-based measurements of plant productivity as a way to anticipate quick-forming “flash” droughts.
Satellites, like traffic cameras, can catch people breaking the rules. California regulators police water use with an open-source program from OpenET. Incorporating satellite data, the program estimates water that plants “breathe” into the atmosphere and water that evaporates from farm fields. This information, coupled with a database of planted crops, indicates whether farmers are exceeding their allotment of irrigation water. On land, watchdog groups point satellites at natural gas fields to reveal production wells that leak methane. At sea, they track illegal fishing.
SWOT, which will measure ocean currents in addition to freshwater flows, will be the latest entrant into this hall of remote sensing champions.
Pavelsky, a professor in the department of earth, marine, and environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is giddy about the mission and the knowledge it will generate. The drying of the American West, for instance, has revealed the precariousness of reservoirs.
“If you’re a water manager in a region, and you need to know how much water you have available, or how that’s changed over time, we’re going to be able to tell you that in ways that that we’ve never been able to do,” Pavelsky said.
For oceans, SWOT will track small-scale currents and eddies that transport nutrients, salt, and heat. This information will be useful for understanding the ocean’s role in a changing climate.
For rivers, instruments on the satellite will map how floods move across the entire watershed, which is helpful for modeling future inundations. It will also, for the first time, provide a relatively accurate estimate of the water flowing in the world’s major rivers.
“We think that’s absolutely critical,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, head of science at NASA. “The currency of the future is water, and it’s those types of spacecraft that are needed to understand and help utilize it the right way.”
The equipment is so sensitive that it will detect water level changes in the roughly 2 million lakes larger than 250 meters by 250 meters. That’s a surface area equal to a cluster of about 11 football fields. The hope is that the instruments can survey smaller lakes that are 100 meters by 100 meters. The number of lakes measured would then increase to 6 million. Rivers wider than a football field is long will be surveyed, too.
SWOT will pass over sites every week to 10 days. Due to the orbital path, locations closer to the poles will be monitored more frequently than those near the equator. This interval means that SWOT excels for large-scale watershed changes, like the historic floods earlier this year that submerged one-third of Pakistan. SWOT won’t detect changes in creeks or a flash flood that arises after an hour-long downpour. And it won’t transmit data every 15 minutes like a U.S. Geological Survey river gauge. But for large swathes of the world that are essentially a blank space for hydrological information, the mission will be a revolution.
A data revolution energizes scientists like Pavelsky. But data is also power. And data about water is occasionally guarded as a matter of national security. How SWOT will influence the political balance of power is a question that Faisal Hossain is tasked with understanding.
A University of Washington professor and hydrologist, Hossain leads the applications team investigating how people will use SWOT data.
Political sensitivities are an important consideration. Countries in the headwaters of major rivers might not share information with downstream neighbors about reservoir operations. Hoarding water is not a good look. Egypt has raised concerns about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia and how the dam will affect its access to water from the Nile. In the Mekong basin, Thailand filed a complaint with a regional consultative body in 2020 about China’s dams in the river’s upper reaches.
SWOT will pull back the veil of secrecy. Two research projects affiliated with the mission focus on the Nile and Mekong basins. Hossain said verified, publicly available data act like “an independent jury” and could put countries on more even footing.
“It’s kind of like the internet – it democratizes access to water information,” he said.
Hossain recently returned from a trip to Jordan, where he met with Iraqi officials to discuss water issues. The Iraqi officials, he said, were interested in how much water is being held in reservoirs in southeastern Turkey, on rivers that flow into Iraq. Satellite data that reveals seasonal storage changes in the reservoirs would “help them prepare better,” Hossain said. “But also in driving negotiations for water sharing.”
SWOT team members are excited about the upcoming launch because they’ve spent a large portion of their careers nurturing the project. Hossain joined the team in 2008. Pavelsky started even earlier, attending his first SWOT development meeting in 2004, when he was in graduate school.
Once the satellite is in orbit the work doesn’t stop. Data — terabytes per day — will be transmitted starting in March. But it won’t be usable until late summer 2023 at the earliest. First it must be verified for accuracy. Doing so is not a desk job. Pavelsky said that teams will fan out across the globe — the Rhine River, Willamette River, Sierra Nevada lakes, rivers in Alaska, French Guiana, and Madagascar — to measure lake levels and river flows on the ground and compare those results to the SWOT output.
Pavelsky, who recognizes the political sensitivity of the data, will monitor the Waimakariri River, a braided waterway in New Zealand.
“We need to get SWOT data to a place where people really trust it,” Pavelsky said. “And so I think the validation work that we’re going to do is going to be absolutely key.”
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