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Geospatial / Feed

Geospatial data and analysis is critical for conservation, from planning to implementation and measuring success. The Geospatial group focuses on all aspects of this field, from field surveys to remote sensing and data development/analysis to GIS systems.

Group curators

Vance Russell
Over 35 years of experience in biodiversity conservation worldwide, largely focused on forests, rewilding and conservation technology. I run my own business assisting nonprofits and agencies in the conservation community
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How the EU Space Programme supports conservation efforts

Elsa Carla De Grandi

3 November 2024 5:01pm

Article highlighting how the EU's Space Programme is supporting conservation efforts across Europe and beyond, either by providing data products to institutions or by supporting researchers and conservationists working on the ground to protect endangered species.

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Assessing the multidimensional complexity of biodiversity using a globally standardized approach

Elsa Carla De Grandi

2 November 2024 11:53am

Paper describing the Sustainable Ecology and Economic Development (SEED) framework, which assesses multiple dimensions of biodiversity across plants, animals, and microbial taxa, and consolidates this into a single measure of biocomplexity relative to a ‘reference’ ecosystem.

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deadtrees.earth - An Open-Access and Interactive Database for Centimeter-Scale Aerial Imagery to Uncover Global Tree Mortality Dynamics

Elsa Carla De Grandi

2 November 2024 9:00am

deadtrees.earth is an open-access platform hosting more than a thousand centimeter-resolution orthophotos, more than 300,000 ha. Combined with Earth observation data and machine learning it will enable to uncover tree mortality patterns.

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Coupling remote sensing and eDNA to monitor environmental impact: A pilot to quantify the environmental benefits of sustainable agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon

Elsa Carla De Grandi

2 November 2024 8:52am

The authors used the Continuous Degradation Detection and LandTrendr to map forest disturbance and regeneration, carbon sequestration and changes in habitats. This was coupled with eDNA from soil samples from intervention and counterfactual pasture field sites.

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Read "Coupling remote sensing and eDNA to monitor environmental impact: A pilot to quantify the environmental benefits of sustainable agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon | PLOS One" on

Coupling remote sensing and eDNA to monitor environmental impact: A pilot to quantify the environmental benefits of sustainable agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon | PLOS One

Monitoring is essential to ensure that environmental goals are being achieved, including those of sustainable agriculture. Growing interest in environmental monitoring provides an opportunity to improve monitoring practices. Approaches that directly monitor land cover change and biodiversity annually by coupling the wall-to-wall coverage from remote sensing and the site-specific community composition from environmental DNA (eDNA) can provide timely, relevant results for parties interested in the success of sustainable agricultural practices. To ensure that the measured impacts are due to the environmental projects and not exogenous factors, sites where projects have been implemented should be benchmarked against counterfactuals (no project) and control (natural habitat) sites. Results can then be used to calculate diverse sets of indicators customized to monitor different projects. Here, we report on our experience developing and applying one such approach to assess the impact of shaded cocoa projects implemented by the Instituto de Manejo e Certificação Florestal e Agrícola (IMAFLORA) near São Félix do Xingu, in Pará, Brazil. We used the Continuous Degradation Detection (CODED) and LandTrendr algorithms to create a remote sensing-based assessment of forest disturbance and regeneration, estimate carbon sequestration, and changes in essential habitats. We coupled these remote sensing methods with eDNA analyses using arthropod-targeted primers by collecting soil samples from intervention and counterfactual pasture field sites and a control secondary forest. We used a custom set of indicators from the pilot application of a coupled monitoring framework called TerraBio. Our results suggest that, due to IMAFLORA’s shaded cocoa projects, over 400 acres were restored in the intervention area and the community composition of arthropods in shaded cocoa is closer to second-growth forests than that of pastures. In reviewing the coupled approach, we found multiple aspects worked well, and we conclude by presenting multiple lessons learned.

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SEED Index

Elsa Carla De Grandi

1 November 2024 9:05pm

The SEED Index can be used by any organisation to measure and report on biodiversity impacts. The index is currently in beta version and not publicly available and is currently being used by several pilot projects. Interesting to see what this develops into further down the line...

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careers

Geospatial Analyst

Alex Rood

28 October 2024 6:25pm

WWF is looking for a Student Assistant: Geospatial Analyst (m/w/d) for data visualizations and monitoring systems, particularly using GLOBIL (with a focus on ESRI ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro) in the Africa Department

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GIS Education for Sustainable Development 

CathyNj

17 October 2024 5:01pm

I will be presenting on Use of Cartography in Promoting Education for Sustainable Development at Wildlife Clubs of Kenya this month. Objective: To understand how to use &...

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pyeogpr - Python based library that uses Earth Observation data to retrieve biophysical maps using Gaussian Process Regression

Elsa Carla De Grandi

20 October 2024 6:13pm

The library enables to derive biophyiscal maps with a few lines of code (only requirements: region of interest, temporal domain and satellite sensor). All processing runs in the cloud using the openEO API and hence no need to download any imagery.

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FOS Data Collection Tools

Vance Russell

9 October 2024 4:29pm

Field season is over for most. How well did yours go? How did your field collection software work? I tested and reviewed three free and open-source data collection apps in the...

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HeinrichS

11 October 2024 5:43pm

Hi Vance - where can we see the actual review of the tools - the attached "Field.pdf" only show very brief descriptions, and the link to the full chapter doesn't seem to point to a review, but rather a specific chapter on fieldwork in your book, without any reviews?

Thanks!

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MAAP #217: Carbon across the Amazon (part 2): Peak Carbon Areas

Elsa Carla De Grandi

11 October 2024 9:27pm

The report showcases how remote sensing, Planet Forest Carbon Diligence product, can be used to identify peak carbon areas. Peak carbon areas could be excellent candidates for the HIFOR initiative, a new financing instrument that focuses on maintaining intact tropical forests.

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