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SUMMARY OF PROCEEDINGS AND RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS

BREAKOUT GROUP 2


REMOTE SENSING CAPABILITIES FOR THE BIODIVERSITY COMMUNITY:
PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

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

Overview

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:

  • What are the pressing areas in terrestrial and marine biodiversity research that could benefit from applying remote sensing and what are the specific user needs for satellite images (spatial resolution, spectral resolution, other)?
    • Answers to this question form the basis of this report.

  • Use of remote sensing to assess the distribution of marine habitats such as coral reefs has been highlighted by scientists (e.g., 1999 CMC report to NASA). What spatial resolution is sufficient for a reasonable assessment of habitat distributions in marine environments and the health of marine resources?
    • This question was addressed sporadically, in part due to lack of familiarity with the diversity of remote sensing technologies.

  • Past NASA Earth-surface satellite images extending back to the 1970's are archived at the USGS EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, SD. What access criteria, format(s), and other conditions are required by the biodiversity community to utilize these images?
    • Answers to this question were also somewhat vague, in part because those in the group were not familiar with the EROS facility.
    • Nonetheless, the general feeling was that the archives need to be geo-referenced and permanently maintained. In many cases, these archives are the only historical record for changes relevant to biodiversity and should not be discarded.
The biodiversity community represented in this session offered the research areas below as examples of how biodiversity research could benefit from remote sensing imagery. The group was composed of a diverse set of scientists representing both marine and terrestrial interests and was able to list research questions, but did not establish priorities at this time. Rather, the group hopes that NASA will continue collaborative work with the conservation community and refine the list in future forums.

Marine Conservation Research Areas

  • Develop a database to support global inventories of tropical marine habitats such as mangroves and coral reefs and ascertain threats to these systems such as deforestation and resulting sediment plumes into the coastal ocean (Note: The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has started archiving SEAWIFS images of coral reefs worldwide).

  • Establish models of ocean current connectivity between marine environments that can help in detecting potential "hot spots" (i.e., places of high biodiversity) as well as in focusing protection efforts on critical coastal habitats such as mangroves that seed other areas with fish and shellfish larvae. While research efforts are presently underway, it is hypothesized that eddy currents and convergence zones signify large concentrations of fish and shellfish larvae that can undergo metamorphosis, sink out of the water column and "seed" the substrate below. Such connectivity would be important to establish on larger (e.g., roughly 1 km using SEAWIFS) and smaller scales (e.g., 30m from Landsat 7) for the following resource management needs:
    • Establishment of marine protected areas (MPA's) to protect spawning grounds and "hot spot" areas.
    • Tracking of disease (pathogens and harmful algal blooms) that may occur due to changes in habitat, climate, and human use.

  • Support field studies to look at water attenuation coefficients for coral reefs and sea grasses.

  • Pursue more reliable methods for atmospheric correction, including the use of more meteorological data from the tropics and facilitation of ties between the conservation and meteorological communities (e.g., with NCAR at NOAA).

  • Specific Marine Biodiversity Issues that lend themselves well to remote sensing technology
    • Monitor sargassum harvesting in open oceans.
    • Monitor fishing fleets for an assessment of fishing effort.
    • Use remote sensing to produce indices of coral health (i.e., bleaching, mortality, cover, productivity).

Terrestrial Conservation Research Areas

  • Track changes in land use and in coastal communities (e.g., for nutrients, sediments, disturbance).
  • Perform a coastal watershed analysis using Lidar.
  • Develop better associations/predictive models between remotely-sensed vegetative cover and communities and biodiversity.
  • Develop specific indices for different ecosystems using remote sensing data.
  • Bridge the resolution gap between point data on the ground and satellite data by judicious deployment of aircraft sensors.
  • Develop low cost aerial platforms.
  • Use remote sensing to assess local/regional patterns of terrestrial biomass.
  • Process and archive remote sensing images of rapid ecological changes.
  • Promote the international coordination of satellite efforts.
  • Do not ignore low-productivity terrestrial ecosystems.

  • Specific Terrestrial Biodiveristy Issues that lend themselves well to remote sensing technology
    • Monitor MONTREUX/RAMSAR wetlands over a 5-year time period; these wetlands are critical mega-freshwater areas that affect water quality and climate
    • Monitor changes in tidal flats and mud flats distribution (currently undergoing intense conversion in Asia)
    • Track the conversion of mangroves for agriculture and other human development (50-100m scale pixel resolution needed)
    • Monitor critical riparian corridors in arid ecosystems (10m pixel minimum resolution)
    • Produce better time series of anthropogenic fires (e.g., use NOAA web site as a resource)

Conservation Issues Spanning Both Marine and Terrestrial Environments

  • Carbon sequestration for global change assessments and the correlation of approaches to biodiveristy research with carbon strategies
  • Biomass and vegetation mapping for the baseline mapping of biodiversity
  • Good global indicators of non-point sources of organic pollution

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