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Co-Chairs:
Jonathan Phinney, Center for Marine Conservation, Washington, DC (Now: Executive Director, American Society of Limnology and Oceanography) Esteban Muldavin, New Mexico Natural Heritage Program, Albuquerque, NM Xiaojun Li, The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA
Jonathan Phinney of the Center for Marine Conservation (CMC) moderated this session that focused on the enormous variety of remote sensing tools that are currently available to the biodiversity community. Remote sensing with satellite- and aircraft-based sensors holds great potential for conservation biology with over 30 civilian satellite sensors presently operational or planned for operation by the year 2000. Despite this plethora of sensors, the general consensus of this working group was that limited contact existed between field-oriented and remote sensing scientists. Consequently, remote sensing technology is not being utilized to its full extent to the detriment of NASA and the scientific community. This gap is due, in part, to the specialization of scientific fields and to lack of fora such as scientific meetings that encourage cross-disciplinary interactions. Also lacking is a formal funding mechanism that encourages collaboration between conservation biologists and remote sensing scientists. Ideas developed by the breakout group are listed below and should be considered as a first-cut at priorities from a single working session. It is suggested that NASA use the list as guidance and convene other fora, perhaps in conjunction with scientific meetings, to develop these and other priorities.
This session provided an overview of remote sensing capabilities available to the biodiversity community as well as case studies from conservation projects in marine and terrestrial systems that utilized satellite- and aircraft-borne sensors. The following questions were posed to the breakout group at the outset as a means of focusing the discussions:
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