Summary of Working Group Proceedings
Prepared by Melissa Connor, Wildlife Conservation Society and
Prashant Hedao, World Wildlife Fund
Background
The biological conservation community has recognized the potential of GIS and remote-sensing technology to greatly aid their work for many years. The efforts of this community have produced many useful analytical tools to support biological conservation. NGOs, museums and academics have developed many innovative applications, including methods for setting geographic priorities to address the conservation, at both the species and ecosystem levels, and landscape ecology applications for evaluation and planning purposes. Several consortia have been initiated in the past few years to aid the conservation community in the United States in developing GIS capacity and to promote understanding of GIS among conservation biologists. Further, larger NGOs, particularly the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, have engaged in activities to gather and disseminate global and regional data sets such as the Biodiversity Map Library and ReefBase. However, initiatives to standardize and disseminate more detailed data sets and to engage in developing specific remote sensing tools for biological conservation have not progressed as far as possible.
Discussion of the Issue
The conservation community began using GIS and remote sensing data only recently. As a consequence both technical and managerial staff in this community are developing new applications, keeping up with these rapidly changing technologies and trying to find better ways to locate and access relevant data. Many conservation NGOs and museums face constraints in staffing, technical expertise in image processing, GIS facility configuration, and remote-sensing data access and affordability. Further, technical staff find it difficult to stay up to date on new remote sensing technologies specifically, the potential uses and handling of new types of imagery. Remote-sensing data are of particular importance as much of the work of the conservation community takes place in developing countries where reliable data is, at best, difficult to come by.
The second problem the conservation community faces is that of data standardization and sharing. Part of this problem lies in issues related to data ownership and legal considerations that act as barriers to data sharing. However, this is a small part of a larger issue -- how do individuals working on a project know what is already out there and how can they get access to it? Moreover, many data are collected using different methods, making comparisons of different data sets difficult. Some of these problems are issues for the conservation community, but NASA could work with the NGOs and museums to assist in the development of a conservation information management system. NASA has a number of people who are extremely skilled at handling large amounts of data, and putting together different kinds of information. In turn, NASA staff are not fully aware of the vast amount of data holdings in the conservation community. If this information were integrated in some data system or infrastructure, it could serve as an invaluable resource for the conservation community and NASA, as well as a starting point for implementing standards for data formats and documentation.
How to Address the Issue
There are two components of this theme one focusing on education about remote-sensing data, the other focusing on the sharing of biological data. As a first step, the Steering Committee recently disseminated a questionnaire to its participating NGOs and museums. The questionnaire asked each organization to describe their current GIS and remote-sensing hardware and software configuration, primary application areas, data sets, and related activities, as well as the general background of their technical, scientific and managerial staff associated with these projects. The object of this process is to facilitate a greater understanding among the conservation NGOs and museums and within NASA's Mission to Planet Earth Program of: the current status of GIS and remote-sensing technologies in NGOs and museums; the goals for the use of these technologies; and the limitations to achieving these goals. This information will allow the working group for this theme to review the collective limitations in light of the respective applications areas and activities. It will enable the working group to focus on the critical needs and work with NASA staff to find out in which areas NASA might be able to assist in overcoming these limitations, such as through an educational component. The question of what data holdings exist in NASA, particularly in the Mission to Planet Earth Program, will be addressed in the larger workshop sessions, but issues of searching, accessing and using remote sensing data will be discussed further in this working group.
The next step is to address what data the conservation community hold and the type of data each organization collects. What is out there in the conservation community? This question also is addressed in the questionnaire and will be further discussed at the workshop, mostly to help NASA staff gain a better understanding of data-gathering activities and data needs in the conservation community. Many of these data could be useful for promoting conservation activities within NASA and collaboration between NASA and the conservation community. The working group will discuss a system for organizing conservation community data.
Two types of pilot projects emerge from the two components of this theme. First, a series of courses, which is informed by the primary applications and limitations of the NGOs and museums, as well as NASA's technical expertise, could benefit most organizations. This could make up the education component of this theme. Topic ideas, some of which lend themselves to a seminar format, others to a classroom format, include:
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Methods to search and access existing remote sensing data;
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Processing of existing remote sensing data (georectification, producing image composites) using NASA software (e.g., SeaWiFS or other software). This could also include development of a land-cover classification algorithm that would address conservation applications;
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Uses of new types of remote sensing data;
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Data management and archiving; and
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Methods and products of the other pilot projects.
These classes should not preclude participation by managers or technical staff, but incorporate both.
Second, for the information management aspect of this theme, there are a couple of types of projects that could result. The scope of either choice will have to be limited geographically or otherwise for the pilot phase. If it is successful, there is potential for expansion into a more comprehensive system. Two types are:
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Development of a World Wide Web page with metadata and links to conservation data
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Development of a conservation information system with selected data from conservation organizations
Evaluation of Results
For the educational component, the success of the pilot project can be evaluated in terms of level of participation and the actual application of new knowledge about remote-sensing data gained in the short courses. The information management component can be evaluated by the level of use of the pilot project's product as well.
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