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APPENDIX 2

OUTLINES FOR BREAKOUT GROUPS

OUTLINE FOR GROUP 1


BIODIVERSITY INDICATORS AND MODELING

Problem: Incomplete data on distribution and condition of biological diversity (species, species assemblages) worldwide.

Associated difficulties:

  1. Cost, time and magnitude of effort in gathering data on global biodiversity based on point or site sampling.
  2. Limited capacity to generalize the distribution and/or condition of biological communities based on point samples.
  3. Limited knowledge of useful indicators that can cross spatial scales and taxonomic groups.
  4. Limited capacity to detect important trends and intervene before changes outstrip adaptability.
Goal: To tie NASA's landscape - global and regional - data with the site-based efforts of field ecologists and systematists, and with habitat and species point (geographic coordinates) data.

Proposed Action: A working group that will focus on questions about...

  1. the state of knowledge about biological diversity worldwide, and the information gathered from satellite imagery;
  2. landscape factors (such as climate, land use), how they affect biodiversity, and how they are detected;
  3. scale factors and the relationship of landscape analysis to point data collected by field ecologists and/or gathered in museums. Can point data be aggregated in landscape analysis, or can landscape data be used in predicting the distribution of species on a regional or global scale? How could GIS modeling and satellite data improve the prediction of species distribution on a regional to global scale?
  4. environmental surrogates to the occurrences of species and species assemblages;
  5. monitoring trends, selecting indicators, and detecting patterns. What aspects of biodiversity can be monitored effectively at various scales, and how?
  6. GIS modeling and the analyses of remotely sensed data that relate directly to the biology and ecology of the species or communities at focus.
Objectives of Working Group Discussions:
  • define types of data available - from remote sensing to georeferenced point data - and determine their properties, limitations, and relationships;
  • evaluate available models for predicting distribution, abundance and condition of biodiversity based on remote and georeferenced data;
  • determine the environmental parameters (that can be detected remotely) that best explain/predict the distribution of species and communities;
  • determine ecological characteristics that can be detected and monitored at the landscape scale; tie these characteristics to management action; and
  • strengths and limitations of remote sensing data.
Structure of Working Group Discussion:
  1. Presentations of two views, in different scales, that illustrate various approaches to setting baseline data, selecting characteristics for monitoring, combining remotely sensed and georeferenced data, and tying landscape-scale monitoring to conservation action.
    • Global/Continental View: Use of 1-km resolution, remotely sensed datasets and species point data to extrapolate and predict the distribution of particular species, to assess the ecological factors most likely to be determining the distribution of focal species, and to develop a biodiversity map showing distribution patterns of individual species and of species assemblages.

      Presentations:

        Setting the scene: biodiversity, indicators, scales and monitoring
          Donat Agosti, Yeqiao Wang

        Major challenges in determining species distributions
          Norman Johnson

        Distribution models: how powerful are they? Toward a specimen-based approach to assessing global biodiversity
          David Stockwell

        Selecting indicator species: plants in the Amazon
          Dan Nepstad(?)

        Potential vs. actual distribution maps: NASA's impact
          Sasan Saatchi, Donat Agosti


    • Regional/Local View:

      Presentations:

        Advantages and limitations of data-integration modeling in monitoring of habitat condition.
          Yeqiao Wang

  2. Discussion

  3. Recommendations
OUTLINE FOR GROUP 2

REMOTE SENSING CAPABILITIES FOR THE BIODIVERSITY COMMUNITY:

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Overview
Remote sensing using satellite, and aircraft-based sensors holds great potential for the biodiversity conservation community. There are almost 30 civilian satellite sensors that are presently operational or will be by the year 2000. Despite the plethora of sensors, there is limited contact between field-oriented and remote sensing scientists - in part due to the specialization of scientific fields. This breakout group will provide an overview of remote sensing capabilities available to the biodiversity community as well as present case studies from work in marine and terrestrial systems that utilized satellite and aircraft sensors. After the presentations, a facilitated discussion will commence to explore some research areas in biodiversity conservation that could benefit from remote sensing images.

The discussion group will focus on the following:

  1. What are the pressing research questions in terrestrial and marine biodiversity that could benefit from applying remote sensing? What are the specific user needs from satellite images (spatial resolution, spectral quality, other)?

  2. Using remote sensing to assess the distribution of habitats such as coral reefs has been highlighted by scientists. What spatial scale is good enough to get a reasonable assessment of a habitat distribution and assessment?

  3. Past NASA Earth-surface satellite images are archived at the EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, SD. What access, format and other needs does the biodiversity community require to utilize these images?
The outcome of the breakout group will be a list of recommendations for NASA from the biodiversity community on high-priority research questions that could benefit from remote sensing inputs. The recommendations will be drafted in the breakout session and presented at the plenary session for review by all participants.

Schedule

Wednesday June 16

3:15-3:30 General Introduction and Goals of Session Jonathan Phinney CMC Washington, DC
3:30-3:50 Overview of Remote Sensing Capabilities TBA
3:50-4:10 Overview of Space Shuttle, Skylab and Mir Photographs Julie Robinson NASA-JSC, Houston,TX
4:15-4:45 Initial Discussion on Remote Sensing Uses in Biodiversity Jonathan Phinney

Thursday, June 17

8:30-9:00 Use of Remote Sensing for Tropical Coastal Management and Assessment. Ed Green WCMC, Cambridge, England
9:00-9:30 Using Remote Sensing to Determine Boundaries for Marine Protected Areas (MPA) Joe Vanderbloemen Univ. South Florida
9:30-10:00 Dual Camera Videography and 3-D Terrain Reconstruction as Tools to Estimate Carbon Sequestering in Forests Howard Schultz, Univ. of Massachusetts
10:00-10:15 BREAK
10:15-11:30 Group Discussion on establishing research priorities in biodiversity that can utilize remote sensing capabilities.


OUTLINE FOR GROUP 3


FRAGMENTATION

Overview
Understanding the ecological, biological and management issues associated with habitat fragmentation is a main component of conservation biology. Over the past few years, several efforts have focused on defining the scientific issues related to fragmentation, including studies of: deforestation in tropical and temperate ecosystems, losses of biological diversity, and changes in physical and ecological processes. NASA's Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) through its LCLUC (Land Cover and Land Use Change) program has focused on the ecological, climatic, and social causes and impacts of landscape conversion. Within this program, scientific issues related to land cover change (such as forcing factors and drivers, processes of changes, and responses to change) are addressed. The program also supports a series of regional and local studies for integrating space observations and in situ measurements.

This LCLUC program also helped to develop the capability for repeated global inventories of land cover from space, such as the GOFC (Global Observation of Forest Cover) activity. Currently, at least two issues of importance to the conservation biology community are not sufficiently addressed by NASA's ESE program: 1) The impact of forest and landscape conversion on biological diversity, and 2) the management and conservation of landscapes for a continued and sustainable diversity.

This breakout group will discuss issues related to forest fragmentation, its impact on biodiversity, and relevant remote sensing tools and other baseline data for mapping and monitoring forest/habitat fragmentation.

Questions for Discussion

  1. What are the physical and ecological characteristics of fragmentation? What types of ecosystems are most threatened by fragmentation?

  2. What are the issues involved in mapping and monitoring fragmentation? What types of remote sensing data sets are required? What pixel resolutions can help to measure and monitor important convolutions, lobes, and concavities in fragment perimeters that strongly influence the vulnerability of fragments to edge effects?

  3. What is the current understanding of the impact(s) of edge effects on biological diversity? What types of data sets are required to quantify the changes in diversity as a result of forest or habitat conversion and increased edge?

  4. What is the present knowledge of the distance to which hunters penetrate forest remnants and nature reserves? Hunting can interact synergistically with fragmentation to devastate some wildlife species. What types of information are required to model and monitor the behavior of hunters and their interaction with forest fragments from roads, rivers, and forest edges?

  5. What types of case studies in terms of geographical locations, temporal and spatial scales, and biological measurements are needed to improve our understanding of forest or habitat fragmentation?

  6. If reforestation and successional processes partially sustain biological diversity, what types of data sets and tools are required to establish this and at the same time direct policies for conservation and management?
Suggested Schedule and Speakers

During the working group meeting on June 16, we will have a few short presentations to address some of these issues. The discussion for the rest of the meeting should help articulate ideas for approaching fragmentation issues in the context of NASA's ESE program.

  1. Sasan Saatchi: Introduction (5-10 minutes)

  2. William Laurance: Forest Fragmentation (15 minutes)

  3. Compton Tucker: Fragmentation and remote sensing (15 minutes)

  4. TBA: biodiversity and conservation (15 minutes)

  5. Howard Schultz: Use of Videography in detecting fragmentation (15 minutes)

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