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topic: Monitoring
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Attacks on Cambodian environmental journalist continue to pile up
- Cambodian environmental journalist Ouk Mao was attacked by a group of men, apparently including a former police officer, while documenting illegal logging in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, following a pattern of escalating harassment and threats.
- Mao has faced numerous legal challenges, including defamation and incitement charges, that he claims are retaliation for exposing environmental crimes, with local officials allegedly trying to silence his work.
- Cambodia’s crackdown on critical journalism has intensified, with Mao’s case reflecting a broader decline in press freedom, as highlighted by the country’s plummeting rank in the 2025 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedoms Index.
- Advocacy groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association warn that the lack of accountability for attacks on journalists has created a dangerous environment for those reporting on illegal logging and other sensitive issues.
Indonesia’s deforestation claims under scrutiny over ‘cherry-picked’ data
- Researchers say Indonesia’s claim of a 90% deforestation drop over the past decade is misleading due to cherry-picked data and an extreme baseline year.
- The actual decline is closer to 50-69%, driven by earlier policies and reduced forest availability in many regions.
- Deforestation is rising again, especially in Papua and Sulawesi, fueled by palm oil, pulpwood, and mining expansion.
- Civil society groups are crucial in tracking and exposing forest loss amid conflicting government policies and rising environmental threats.
‘Puma detectives’ highlight wildlife where Brazil’s Cerrado meets the Atlantic Forest
- A project in the Brazilian state of Goiás is monitoring the routes and distances traveled by pumas, known locally as suçuaranas, to understand how the species lives in environments that have been modified by human activities.
- The mapping is fundamental for strengthening the research carried out inside the ecological corridor stretching between two important state parks in Goiás, one in the Cerrado savanna biome and the other in the coastal Atlantic Forest.
- The project, called Suçuaranas Detetives (Puma Detectives) is part of a broader project involving education and awareness-building programs on peaceful coexistence between rural communities and the ecosystems in Brazil’s central regions.
Fishing cats misunderstood, misidentified in Nepal’s Kapilvastu
- Fishing cats in Nepal are often misunderstood and mistaken for leopards or blamed for fish losses, leading to retaliation and conflict with fish farmers.
- Surveillance measures like CCTV and myths have fueled fear and misinformation, despite little evidence showing fishing cats as major threats to aquaculture.
- A conservation initiative called “fish banks” tried to reduce conflict by compensating farmers with fish instead of money but had mixed results and eventually lost funding.
- Experts emphasize the need for science-based conservation, better population data and public education to protect fishing cats and promote coexistence in human-altered landscapes.
Indonesia strengthens forest monitoring with new tool to meet EU deforestation law
- Indonesia is stepping up traceability efforts to comply with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which bans imports of deforestation-linked commodities like palm oil, timber and coffee starting in December 2025.
- A new platform, Ground Truthed.id (GTID), combines field-based evidence and geolocation data to detect and document environmental violations in real time, offering a bottom-up alternative to satellite-reliant systems.
- GTID emphasizes collaboration with Indigenous peoples, civil society and law enforcement, using a verification process to turn grassroots reports into legally actionable cases.
- The platform is expected to complement a government-run traceability dashboard by acting as an independent watchdog, helping prevent illegally sourced or conflict-ridden products from entering international supply chains.
Surgically implanted tags offer rare insight into rehabilitated sea turtles
In 2021, the New England Aquarium in the U.S. state of Massachusetts began surgically implanting acoustic tags in rescued loggerhead sea turtles before returning them to the ocean. Four years on, these tags are providing a rare peek into where rehabilitated turtles travel. “Surgically implanted acoustic transmitters have been used for many years in many […]
Both legal and illegal wildlife trade ‘need better monitoring’: Interview with Alice Hughes
- The legal wildlife trade is worth $220 billion annually and involves at least 70,000 species, yet data on its sustainability is scarce, especially for species not listed under CITES, the global wildlife trade convention.
- CITES only covers a fraction of traded species, and most countries lack standardized, publicly available trade data, making it difficult to assess threats to biodiversity.
- The rise of online marketplaces and demand for exotic pets, including lesser-known species like arachnids and woodlice, is driving unsustainable harvesting, often before regulations can catch up.
- Researcher Alice Hughes, from the University of Hong Kong, proposes shifting to a “green listing” system where only preapproved species can be traded, combined with real-time monitoring, genetic barcoding, and digital tracking to improve enforcement and sustainability.
Smart tags reveal migratory bats are storm-front surfers
What’s new: Some bats, like birds, migrate long distances. But these long-distance bat migrations have been somewhat of a mystery to researchers, especially since only a few species embark on them. Now, in a new study, researchers have mapped the odyssey of common noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) using innovative tiny trackers. And the results have […]
Sea change for soy champion Brazil as it wrestles with EUDR compliance
- A dry run of a shipment of soy by commodities trader Cargill from Brazil to Europe, replicating the requirements to comply with the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), found that although the company met several requirements, it still faced other challenges.
- The EUDR, initially planned to come into effect this month and recently postponed for another year, will require suppliers to prove that their products exported to the EU aren’t sourced from illegally deforested areas.
- To comply with the EUDR requirements, companies from the soy industry are setting up new business structures to provide 100% traceability point by point from the producer to the port, until it enters the ship, in addition to tackling logistics challenges, says the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (Abiove).
- California-based nonprofit CTrees says it’s uncertain whether the EUDR will result in a significant reduction in deforestation, and raised concerns on the potential exclusion of smallholders and local communities from the supply chain because of the difficulty of getting them to meet compliance requirements.
Coffee agroforestry promises a path to EUDR compliance, but challenges remain
- Companies in the coffee sector have begun preparing for compliance with the EU’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR); among them are Nespresso and commodity trader Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC).
- For both companies, the pathway to regulatory alignment involves previous commitments to eliminating deforestation from their supply chains and sourcing coffee from farms employing agroforestry and regenerative agriculture methods.
- International NGOs such as the Rainforest Alliance are supporting companies and farmers in implementing best practices and meeting EUDR requirements.
- Despite considerable progress in the coffee sector, challenges remain, particularly in enforcing deforestation-free practices within supply chains, overcoming financial constraints, and distinguishing “forest” from “agroforest” through satellite imagery.
Brazil paper and pulp industry invests in blockchain to comply with EUDR
- Brazil’s paper and pulp industry says the European Union’s deforestation-free products regulation (EUDR), which will come into effect in late 2025, won’t affect the sector’s operations, which has already traced its supply chains “from farm to factory” for more than two decades and doesn’t source from illegal deforested areas.
- The EUDR will require suppliers to prove that their products exported to the EU aren’t sourced from illegally deforested areas; in Brazil, experts say it will help halt illegal deforestation in the Amazon.
- To fulfill some specific EUDR requirements, companies need to invest in blockchain and other technologies, which could increase the cost per ton of pulp by up to $230, according to the Brazilian Tree Industry (Ibá).
- The EUDR postponement was received differently by the industry and experts: While Ibá says it would allow “a smoother and more effective implementation,” given some aspects that need improvement from the EU Commission, deforestation experts say there is no time to wait, as deforestation continues and the climate crisis gets worse.
Satellites and lidar get AI boost to count forest carbon stock worldwide
- A newly launched tool combines satellite images, lidar data and artificial intelligence to estimate carbon stored in forests around the world.
- The Forest Carbon Monitoring tool, developed by Earth-imaging company Planet, trained an AI model using the organization’s archival satellite data and globally available lidar data.
- The model is now being used in conservation efforts as well as in the voluntary carbon market.
Using science to fight deforestation: Interview with World Forest ID’s Jade Saunders & Andrew Lowe
- World Forest ID, a nonprofit consortium of research organizations, uses chemical and genetic profiling techniques to trace timber to the location where it was grown and harvested.
- The technique has been used to locate the origin of wood in the European Union and to keep a check on the import of products made with sanctioned Russian timber.
- The organization is now working to expand its database to include soy, cocoa and coffee to be able to use its technique when the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) comes into effect.
Tracking footprints to monitor wildlife: Interview with WildTrack’s Zoe Jewell
- WildTrack, a U.S.-based nonprofit, uses footprints as a noninvasive way of identifying and tracking wildlife.
- The organization has developed an artificial intelligence model that can identify 17 species, including rhinos, lions, leopards and polar bears.
- The footprint identification model has been used to identify the home range of fishers in California, support antipoaching efforts in Botswana, and understand human-wildlife conflict in South America.
Satellite firm Planet’s ‘biodiversity subscription’ aims to make tech accessible
- A new initiative by Earth-imaging company Planet gives conservation organizations in biodiversity hotspots access to high-resolution, high-frequency satellite data.
- As part of Project Centinela, eight entities have received access to satellite data and analysis tools to help them track and monitor biodiversity in places including Bolivia, Costa Rica, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The organizations will have access to the data for three years as part of what Planet calls a “biodiversity subscription.”
- Planet aims to partner with 50 organizations around the world over the next three years as part of the initiative.
Scientists find unexpected biodiversity in an African river, thanks to eDNA
- Scientists have used environmental DNA analysis to identify 125 species of aquatic and terrestrial animals in the remote Corubal River in West Africa.
- The identified species include critically endangered animals as well as species that weren’t previously known to occur in the region.
- The Corubal flows through Guinea and Guinea-Bissau; because of its remote nature, there haven’t been a lot of large-scale attempts to study the biodiversity in the river and its basin.
- The scientists are also working to collect specimens and tissue samples from animals encountered along the river to build a DNA reference database for the future.
$35m debt-for-nature deal aims to protect Indonesia’s coral reefs
- A $35 million debt-for-nature swap between Indonesia and the U.S. aims to conserve coral reefs in eastern Indonesia over the next nine years, with the funding offset by canceled sovereign debt payable to the U.S.
- Indonesian conservation groups and their international partners will implement ground programs to protect reefs in key areas, strengthen marine protected areas and support community livelihoods under the deal.
- While environmentalists welcomed the funding, some argued debt swaps were insufficient to address the larger environmental and development challenges faced by countries in the global south.
Regions with highest risks to wildlife have fewest camera traps, study finds
- Camera traps are widely used to monitor biodiversity and guide conservation actions, but a first-of-its-kind study finds the technology isn’t as prevalent in highly biodiverse areas that face the most threats from human activities, such as the Congo Basin and the Amazon Rainforest.
- Even in areas with a high number of camera-trap studies, nearly two-thirds were conducted outside the regions facing the highest risk of animal extinctions.
- Country income, accessibility, mammal diversity and biome largely determine the locations of nearly two-thirds of camera-trap research.
- Experts suggest expanding the network of camera-trap studies, building capacity among local research communities, and leveraging tools and platforms that help with data sharing and analysis to address these disparities.
Crowdsourcing eDNA for biodiversity monitoring: Interview with Kristy Deiner
- Scientists at ETH Zurich launched a global project to gather biodiversity data from 500 lakes around the world.
- As part of LeDNA, citizen scientists from around the world collected environmental DNA samples from lakes to commemorate the U.N.’s International Day for Biological Diversity.
- With the samples, the team behind the project aims to understand more about how lakes could potentially serve as “sensors” detecting the richness of life in the catchments surrounding them.
New satellite data documents deforestation across ecosystems worldwide
- New satellite data documents the loss of vegetation in all types of ecosystems, not just tropical rainforests, around the world.
- The OPERA DIST-ALERT was developed by the makers of popular forest monitoring platform Global Forest Watch.
- The monitoring system incorporates managed forests, grasslands, shrublands and croplands along with tropical forests.
- The data obtained from two of NASA’s Landsat satellites and two of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellites reflected lost vegetation around the world due to various factors — ranging from fires in Canada to logging in the Republic of Congo and cyclones in Malawi.
Tropical forest loss puts 2030 zero-deforestation target further out of reach
- The overall rate of primary forest loss across the tropics remained stubbornly high in 2023, putting the world well off track from its net-zero deforestation target by 2030, according to a new report from the World Resources Institute.
- The few bright spots were Brazil and Colombia, where changes in political leadership helped drive down deforestation rates in the Amazon.
- Elsewhere, however, several countries hit record-high rates of forest loss, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia and Laos, driven largely by agriculture, mining and fires.
- The report authors call for “bold global mechanisms and unique local initiatives … to achieve enduring reductions in deforestation across all tropical front countries.”
Ancient giant river dolphin species found in the Peruvian Amazon
- Paleontologists discovered a fossilized skull of a newly described species of giant freshwater dolphin in the Peruvian Amazon, which lived around 16 million years ago and is considered the largest-known river dolphin ever found.
- The ancient creature, measuring 3-3.5 meters (9.8-11.5 feet), was surprisingly related to South Asian river dolphins rather than the local, living Amazon river pink dolphin and shared highly developed facial crests used for echolocation.
- The discovery comes at a time when the six existing species of modern river dolphins face unprecedented threats, with their combined populations decreasing by 73% since the 1980s due to unsustainable fishing practices, climate change, pollution, illegal mining and infrastructure development.
- Conservation efforts are underway, including the signing of the Global Declaration for River Dolphins by nine countries and successful initiatives in China and Indonesia, highlighting the importance of protecting these critical species that serve as indicators of river ecosystem health.
‘We’re doing so much with so little’: Interview with WildLabs’ Talia Speaker
- The use of technology for conservation and wildlife monitoring increased in recent years, with camera traps and remote sensing being the most popular tools, a report has found.
- The report by conservation technology network WildLabs also found that artificial intelligence was highly ranked for its potential impact, but was ranked low in terms of current performance because of accessibility issues.
- Marginalized groups, including women and people from lower-income countries, were found to face disproportionate barriers to accessing resources and training.
- “The motivation behind this research was to capture the experiences of the global conservation technology community, and to speak with a united voice,” says Talia Speaker, who led the research.
Conservation X Labs announces merger with AI nonprofit Wild Me
- Conservation technology company Conservation X Labs has announced a merger with Wild Me, a nonprofit that focuses on using artificial intelligence for conservation purposes.
- The two organizations plan to combine their resources and expertise to ramp up the use of artificial intelligence to prevent the sixth mass extinction.
- The merger comes at a time when AI’s role in biodiversity monitoring and conservation has seen rising popularity.
- According to a press statement by Conservation X Labs, the company will “integrate Wild Me’s technology into its product offerings.”
‘No end in sight’ for potential of conservation tech: Q&A with Megan Owen
- For the past seven years, the conservation technology lab at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has been working to develop and deploy technology that can automate the collection and processing of wildlife data.
- Running a tech lab in a zoo has the benefit of providing scientists with a setting where they can use the wildlife in their care to validate the data and calibrate the technology.
- Team members at the lab are also working to develop and mentor the next generation of conservation technologists who can keep up with the rapidly evolving field.
- Making the technology “low-cost and accessible, fixable, deployable and programmable” continue to be some of the challenges that the team is working to overcome, according to SDZWA vice president of conservation science Megan Owen.
Betting on biodiversity: Q&A with Superorganism’s Kevin Webb & Tom Quigley
- Superorganism is a newly launched venture capital firm, touted to be the first that’s dedicated to addressing the biodiversity crisis.
- The firm aims to support startups that are developing and deploying technology to prevent biodiversity loss and protect nature.
- The firm’s early portfolio includes companies that are working to tackle extinction drivers and finding solutions that lay at the intersection of biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation.
Taking the global pulse of biodiversity monitoring: Q&A with Andrew Gonzalez
- A group of scientists have put forward a proposal to set up a global network that centralizes biodiversity monitoring and facilitates seamless sharing of data.
- The group wants its proposed Global Biodiversity Observing System (GBiOS) to function similarly to the network of local weather monitoring stations across the world, whose data are used to analyze and monitor climate change.
- While the technology being used to monitor biodiversity has become more sophisticated over the years, there still exists a void in getting different communities to work together to address the broader challenges in dealing with the biodiversity crisis.
- “We would not only federate people who are working together more effectively, but also fill many of the gaps in the data that currently exist in the biodiversity field,” Andrew Gonzalez, who is leading the proposal for GBiOS, told Mongabay.
AI unlocks secrets of Amazon river dolphins’ behavior, no tagging required
- Freshwater dolphins in the Amazon Basin navigate through flooded forests during the wet season using their flexible bodies and echolocation clicks.
- Researchers have combined advanced acoustic monitoring and AI to study the habits of endangered pink river dolphins (boto) and tucuxi in seasonally flooded habitats.
- They used hydrophones to record sounds in various habitats and employed convolutional neural networks (CNN) to classify the sounds as either echolocation clicks, boat engine noises, or rain — with high accuracy.
- Understanding the dolphins’ movements and behaviors can aid conservation efforts to protect these endangered species, as they face various threats such as fishing entanglement, dam construction, mining, agriculture and cattle ranching.
New Tree Tech: Real-time, long-term, high-tech reforestation monitoring
- This four-part Mongabay mini-series examines the latest technological solutions to help tree-planting projects achieve scale and long-term efficiency. Using these innovative approaches could be vital for meeting international targets to repair degraded ecosystems, sequester carbon, and restore biodiversity.
- Many people see reforestation as a quick fix to the climate emergency, but tree-planting projects often fail to put in place the monitoring programs needed to track newly planted forests. Traditionally, forest monitoring has been done by hand, one tree at a time, which is extremely expensive and time-consuming.
- Satellites are mapping and remapping the entire planet daily, providing real-time data that can be used to monitor forests remotely. Drones can fly over or through forests to collect data on tree growth, bridging the gap between on-site measurements and distant satellites.
- Sensors can be installed to monitor individual trees directly, while people can collect and analyze the data electronically from a safer and easier-to-access location. Multiple sensors can form a distributed network that returns detailed information on the growth of each tree within huge reforestation plots.
The more degraded a forest, the quieter its wildlife, new study shows
- Tropical forest researchers are increasingly using bioacoustics to record and analyze ecosystem soundscapes, the sounds that animals make, which in turn can be used as a proxy for forest health.
- Researchers studying soundscapes in logged rainforests in Indonesian Borneo have tested a novel approach that could provide a reliable and low-cost way for conservation agencies and communities to monitor tropical forest health.
- Their new method, which partitions animal groups into broad acoustic frequency classes, offers a stop-gap method for measuring acoustic activity that could be used in the short-term until more detailed artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology is developed.
- During their study, they found that animal sounds diminished and became asynchronous in forests disturbed by selective logging, factors that could be used as proxies for disturbed habitats.
Murdered Belize environmentalist helped boost marine conservation through technology
- Jon Ramnarace, who worked on protected area patrol and marine conservation technology, was shot and killed alongside his brother David in Belmopan on December 31.
- The main suspect, police corporal Elmer Nah, was taken into custody in January and charged with two counts of murder and attempted murder, deadly means of harm and dangerous harm.
- Ramnarace dedicated his life to protecting land and marine habitats in Central America, most recently in the Turneffe Atoll off the Belizean coast.
Technology makes studying wildlife easier, but access isn’t equal
- Studying primates and other wildlife in nature has long been a challenge owing to their diverse habitats and limitations on established research patterns.
- But a pair of recent studies highlights how the emergence of new technology, ranging from camera traps to drones, has made the work easier in recent years.
- Still, exorbitant costs and lack of technical know-how mean the technology isn’t easily accessible to researchers across the world.
A fisheries observer’s disappearance sheds light on a bigger problem
- Edison Valencia, a fisheries observer, was working on board an Ecuadoran fishing vessel the last time anyone saw him.
- Observers collect data on vessels’ fishing activity that is essential for monitoring the industry’s sustainability.
- Valencia disappeared on March 6, 2018, and his case remains unsolved.
- He is one of more than 20 observers who have disappeared or died on board a fishing vessel since 1983.
‘Amped-up citizen science’ to save the world: Q&A with Conservation AI Hub’s Grant Hamilton
- Conservation AI Hub uses drones and artificial intelligence to detect koalas that survived the Australian bushfires of 2019 and 2020.
- The initiative is now working with communities in Australia to train them on using the technology by themselves.
- Director Grant Hamilton says it’s imperative to make technology more accessible so that more citizens can engage and participate in global conservation efforts.
No critical examination of flawed environmental assessments in Nepal, experts say
- Nepal has for decades required an environmental impact assessment (EIA) be conducted for development projects, but their quality and monitoring has been largely ineffective, experts say.
- The issue came to light earlier this year when the top court canceled an airport project in part because of its flawed EIA, which included entire passages lifted directly from a hydropower project’s EIA.
- Experts say the laws and monitoring mechanisms are in place to ensure the EIA process is effective in mitigating harm to the environment, but that the political will is lacking.
High tech early warning system could curb next South African locust swarms
- The worst locust swarms in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province in 25 years (occurring in May 2022) is in the past. But the millions of eggs laid by the insects could hatch this September, the beginning of spring in the Southern Hemisphere.
- Grassy farmland in the vast region was only just beginning to recover from a devastating six year drought which struck between 2015 – 2021, when the locust swarms arrived earlier this year.
- Farmers are now pinning their hopes on new software that will track newborn locusts in real time, enabling them to target and exterminate the insect pests before they take to the skies and reproduce.
- The software has been used in seven countries in the Horn of Africa and East Africa and is seen as a vital part of minimizing the size of swarms, which can become an annual disaster if they aren’t targeted immediately after birth. South Africa favors chemical pesticides over non-toxic biopesticides for locust control.
Can conservation technology help save our rapidly disappearing species? | Problem Solved
- Humanity knows, in a best-case scenario, only 20% of the total species on Earth.
- Yet humans have, at a minimum, increased species extinction 1,000 times above the natural extinction rate, raising concerns among field monitoring experts who worry they may be “writing the obituary of a dying planet.”
- The establishment of protected areas often depends on the ability of conservationists to effectively monitor and track land-based species — but is this happening fast enough?
- For this episode of “Problem Solved,” Mongabay breaks down three of the most innovative pieces of conservation technology and how they can advance the field of species monitoring, and ultimately, conservation.
Indigenous-led report warns against ‘simplistic take on conservation’
- To deal with climate change and biodiversity loss effectively and equitably, conservation needs to adopt a human rights-based approach, according to a new report co-authored by Indigenous and community organizations across Asia.
- Unlike spatial conservation targets such as “30 by 30,” a rights-based approach would recognize the ways in which Indigenous people lead local conservation efforts, and prioritize their tenure rights in measuring conservation success.
- Without tenure rights, strict spatial conservation targets could lead to human rights abuses, widespread evictions of Indigenous communities across Asia, and high resettlement costs, the report warned.
- Also without tenure rights, the inflow of money into nature-based solutions such as carbon offsets and REDD+ projects could also result in massive land grabs instead of benefiting local communities.
For fire-ravaged northern Thailand, there’s now an app to battle the blaze
- Thai researchers incorporating remote-sensing technology into smartphone applications are helping to reduce the severity of forest fires in the country’s northern Chiang Rai province.
- In the past, only local officials had access to hotspot data from satellites; now, whenever a new hotspot is identified, firefighters and nearby communities alike receive notifications on their mobile apps.
- The app has enabled villagers, firefighters, NGOs and scientists to “join forces” in fighting forest fires, and encouraged communities to police and reduce unregulated burning of agricultural land.
- The researchers are currently working on a second app that aims to help local communities transition toward more sustainable ways of clearing and fertilizing their land than burning.
As its end looms, Cerrado tracker records 6-year deforestation high
- The satellite-based deforestation-monitoring program focused on Brazil’s vast Cerrado savanna may end in April because of lack of funding, with some members of the team reportedly already laid off.
- Unlike the monitoring program for the Amazon, the one for the Cerrado isn’t included in the government budget and relies on external financing, which dried up in August 2020; since then, the program team has had to scrounge for funding from other projects and institutions.
- Sharing the scientists’ concerns is the agribusiness sector, which relies on the data to prove that its commodity is deforestation-free, and which has blasted the government’s “blurred” vision with regard to failing to fund the monitoring program.
- News of the impending closure of the monitoring program comes a week after its latest data release showed an area six times the size of the city of São Paulo was cleared between August 2020 and July 2021 — the highest deforestation rate in the Cerrado since 2015.
Global ecosystem restoration progress: How and who’s tracking it?
- Nature-based climate solutions currently being widely touted include the restoration of the world’s degraded forests and other ecosystems in order to store more carbon. But while many restoration pledges have been made by many nations via many initiatives, the monitoring and tracking of their success remains murky.
- That’s because, while deforestation can easily be seen from satellites, effective and accurate ecosystem restoration tracking requires systems for long-term ground-truthing, for measuring carbon storage over decades, and for improvements in biodiversity and the boosting of local economies.
- Among the many ecosystem restoration initiatives now underway are the 2021 Glasgow Forest Declaration and the Bonn Challenge, along with the restoration commitments made as part of national emissions reductions plans under the Paris Climate Agreement (nationally determined contributions or NDCs).
- Strides toward better restoration tracking are being made by initiatives like the Bonn Challenge’s Restoration Barometer and the Brazilian Restoration and Reforestation Observatory — though more work is needed to secure globally accurate tracking.
Bioacoustics researcher wins top award for positive impact toward solving global challenges
- An award that recognizes scientists whose research makes a positive impact on society by addressing global challenges has been given to Zuzana Burivalova.
- The principal investigator for the Sound Forest Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, much of her bioacoustics research has focused on soundscapes, which are entire sonic characteristics of ecosystems.
- Monitoring soundscapes has important conservation applications in places like tropical rainforests where Burivalova’s work is centered.
For South Africa’s dwindling renosterveld, there’s now a ‘panic button’ app
- The renosterveld shrubland once covered the Swartland and Overberg regions of western South Africa, but its rich soils led farmers to clear it for agriculture.
- Remaining fragments continue to provide habitat for birds like endangered black harriers and vulnerable southern black korhaans, and mammals like the grey rhebok, a near-threatened antelope.
- A “panic button” app has been developed in South Africa to alert the authorities to threats facing the renosterveld, the country’s most endangered ecosystem.
Data-driven platform looks to clear up fog of palm oil traceability
- A new web-based monitoring platform, Palmoil.io, has been launched to help the palm oil industry fully trace its product back to its origin to make sure that it’s legally sourced and sustainably produced.
- Existing supply chain monitoring efforts remain fragmented, expensive and uneven as they struggle to trace palm oil product through a complex web of plantations and mills.
- Palmoil.io aims to address this by collecting and analyzing data on more than 2,000 palm mills, 480 refineries and crushers, and 400 high-risk plantations.
- The large, and growing, volume of data will enables Palmoil.io to trace palm oil product to its source and determine whether it’s associated with comes from deforestation, as well as human rights and labor violations or not.
As fossil fuel use surges, will COP26 protect forests to slow climate change?
- Despite the world’s commitment in Paris in 2015 to hold back the tide of global warming, carbon emissions continue rising, while impacts are rapidly escalating as heat waves, drought and extreme storms stalk the world’s poorest and richest nations — bringing intensified human misery and massive economic impacts.
- Once viewed optimistically, nature-based climate solutions enshrined in Article 5 of the Paris Agreement (calling for protections of carbon-storing forests, peat bogs, wetlands, savannas and other ecosystems) is now threatened by politics as usual, and by the unabated expansion of agribusiness and extraction industries.
- As world leaders gather in Scotland for the COP26 climate summit, scientists and advocates are urging negotiators to at last finalize comprehensive effective rules for Article 5, which will help assure “action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases … including forests.”
- Over the first two weeks in November at COP26, the vision and rules set at Paris are to be settled on and fully implemented; John Kerry, co-architect of the Paris accord and President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, calls this vital COP the world’s “last best chance” to finally move beyond mostly empty political promises into climate action.
Monitoring reveals Indonesia’s ‘legal timber’ scheme riddled with violations
- A monitoring exercise by Indigenous peoples and local communities of Indonesia’s “certified legal” timber industry has found myriad violations.
- The group reported, among other findings, logging companies cutting down trees outside their concessions, woodworking shops manipulating delivery records to obscure the origin of the wood, and exporters selling forged export eligibility certificates.
- During their monitoring, the observers faced a range of challenges, from difficulty accessing official records, to threats from armed groups.
- Their work could become even more difficult under a new government regulation that appears to change independent monitoring of the timber industry from a mandatory exercise to an optional one.
Myanmar’s snowcapped north is a haven for large mammals, new study finds
- A camera-trapping study has confirmed that the snowcapped Hkakaborazi landscape in northern Myanmar is a crucial haven for large mammals.
- The research team deployed 174 cameras in the forests and mountain slopes and interviewed local villagers, detecting 40 large mammal species overall.
- Species included evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered species, such as Chinese red pandas, dholes, Shortridge’s langurs and takins.
- The authors recommend a southern extension of a national park boundary to protect forests that are risk of being lost due to agricultural expansion and overhunting.
The first complete map of the world’s shallow tropical coral reefs is here
- Scientists have completed the first-ever global, high-resolution map of the world’s shallow tropical coral reefs.
- When combined with an integrated tool that tracks global coral bleaching events in near-real-time, the new resource provides a comprehensive overview of the trends and changes in global coral reef health.
- While the completion of the map is an achievement in itself, the scientists behind the Allen Coral Atlas say they hope the new resource will spur action to improve coral reef protection.
- The new mapping platform is already being used to support conservation projects in more than 30 countries, including designation of marine protected areas and to inform marine spatial plans.
What makes mapping and monitoring zero-deforestation commitments effective?
- Experts have identified 12 attributes of effective zero deforestation commitment, or ZDC, mapping and monitoring systems.
- The attribute framework can be used to guide the development of effective ZDC mapping and monitoring systems.
- Having such a framework is important as there’s not a single one-size-fits-all ZDC mapping and monitoring system that will meet the needs of all users.
Independent monitoring suggests sharp jump in Amazon rainforest destruction
- Independent analysis released last week by a Brazilian NGO provides evidence of a sharp increase in the rate of forest destruction in Earth’s largest rainforest over the past year.
- Imazon’s SAD deforestation alert system detected 2,095 square kilometers (809 square miles) of forest clearing during July, which brought the total deforestation recorded since August 1, 2020 to 10,476 square kilometers, the highest on record since at least 2008.
- By Imazon’s count, the amount of forest loss detected by its deforestation monitoring system was up 58% over a year ago, and 107% relative to two years ago.
- In contrast, Brazil’s national space research institute INPE reported a 6.8% drop in deforestation compared to a year ago when it released its alert-based data two weeks ago. Discrepancies between the two systems can be attributed up to differences in how they measure deforestation, though the data from the systems typically move mostly in tandem.
Loss of mangroves dims the light on firefly populations in Malaysia
- Firefly populations along the banks of the Rembau River in Malaysia have declined drastically in the past decade due to habitat loss, a new study has found.
- Researchers, who used satellite imagery to monitor changes in land use, found that conversion of Rembau’s mangroves to oil palm plantations and dryland forests were the top two factors behind the loss.
- Remote-sensing technology could help locals better understand the impact of various land use types on mangrove ecosystems and more efficiently prioritize areas for conservation.
In the Borneo canopy, life thrives in surprising ways, camera-trap study shows
- The first systematic camera-trapping survey of arboreal mammals in Southeast Asia reveals a diverse and distinct community; the researchers also recorded evidence of new behaviors and the first ever photograph of a rare flying rodent.
- The team collected more than 8,000 photographs, cataloging 57 species in total, 30 of which were detected exclusively on ground cameras and 18 exclusively in the canopy.
- Since few past studies have targeted arboreal mammals, scientists do not know how human disturbances such as logging may affect them.
- The results demonstrate that surveying in the forest canopy is “crucial to our understanding of rainforest mammal communities,” say the study authors.
More than 250 major fires detected in the Amazon this year, despite Brazil’s ban
- There have been 267 major fires detected in the Amazon this year, burning more than 105,000 hectares (260,000 acres) — an area roughly the size of Los Angeles, California.
- More than 75% of these fires blazed in the Brazilian Amazon, in areas where trees have been cut to make way for agriculture, despite a June 27 ban on unauthorized outdoor fires by the Brazilian government.
- The first forest fires of the season have also been detected, those that have escaped pastures and burned standing Amazon rainforest, where fires are not historically naturally occurring.
- A historic drought, rampant deforestation, and lax environmental regulations mean this year is likely to be a bad year for fires, experts say.
Arboreal camera traps add ‘tons of value’ to forest canopy research
- The burgeoning field of arboreal camera trapping is revealing new knowledge about tree-dwelling species.
- Recent advances in camera technology, climbing techniques and safety equipment have brought the forest canopy more easily within researchers’ reach.
- A new study compiles knowledge from 90 arboreal camera-trapping studies in 24 countries across six continents to help future researchers plan, design and execute surveys.
- The study provides a foundation from which to develop standardized arboreal camera-trapping approaches that will allow researchers to compare data across projects and locations and reveal important global biodiversity patterns.
New index measuring rainforest vulnerability to sound alarm on tipping points
- The new Tropical Forest Vulnerability Index (TFVI) will use satellite data to assess the impact of growing threats such as land clearance and rising temperatures on forests.
- Backed by the National Geographic Society and Swiss watchmaker Rolex, TFVI aims to identify forests most at risk, to be prioritized for conservation efforts.
- Researchers combined 40 years of satellite measurements and forest observations covering tropical forests worldwide to come up with the standardized monitoring system.
- In recent years, multiple stressors have pushed forests to a tipping point, causing them to gradually lose their ecological functions, including their capacity to store carbon and recycle water, the study says.
Betting big on bioacoustics: Q&A with philanthropist Lisa Yang
- Lisa Yang is an investor and philanthropist who donated $24 million last month to establish the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
- Yang told Mongabay that she focused on bioacoustics due to the great potential for scaling the effectiveness of conservation efforts: “The technology can provide an effective way of assessing conservation practices.”
- Yang’s philanthropic interests extend to translational neuroscience and fostering opportunities and respect for people who’ve been historically marginalized by society, including the “neurodiverse and individuals with disabilities.”
- Yang spoke about opportunities to scale impact in conservation during a conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
Armed with data and smartphones, Amazon communities boost fight against deforestation
- Equipping Indigenous communities in the Amazon with remote-monitoring technology can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found.
- Between 2018 and 2019, researchers implemented technology-based forest-monitoring programs in 36 communities within the Peruvian Amazon.
- Compared with other communities where the program wasn’t implemented, those under the program saw 52% and 21% less deforestation in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
- The gains were concentrated in communities at highest risk of deforestation due to threats like logging and illegal mining.
For Norway salmon farms giving up deforestation-linked soy, Cargill proves a roadblock
- Two major salmon producers in Norway have eliminated all links to deforestation in their soy supply chains, according to new analysis from eco-watchdog Rainforest Foundation Norway.
- This is due in large part to a ripple effect down the value chain, after Brazilian soy suppliers to the European salmon industry made no-deforestation commitments earlier this year.
- However, at least seven of the biggest salmon producers in Norway have yet to become fully deforestation-free, according to the report.
- This is because they buy feed from Cargill Aqua Nutrition, whose parent company, U.S.-based Cargill, has been linked to deforestation in South America.
Fire season intensifies in the Brazilian Amazon, feeding off deforestation
- Twenty-four major fires have burned in the Brazilian Amazon so far this year, all of them set on land previously deforested in 2020, until this week when the first major blaze was set on land cleared in 2021.
- Experts are expecting this to be a bad year for fires, owing to a historic drought, high levels of deforestation, and a lack of funding for environmental law enforcement.
- President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree on June 23 to send Brazilian soldiers into the Amazon to curb deforestation (which often precedes fires), but one expert calls this a “smokescreen” that would allow deforestation to continue.
- Deforestation rates have been higher under Bolsonaro than any past president: in 2020, Brazil lost a Central Park-sized area of forest every two hours, and on the day with the highest rate of deforestation, July 31, an estimated 2 million trees were cut down.
The conservation gains we’ve made are still fragile, says Aileen Lee of the Moore Foundation
- When Aileen Lee took on the mantle of chief program officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, she brought substantial experience as a management consultant to a nonprofit that’s the largest private donor of Amazon conservation efforts.
- Like management consultants, she says, grant makers “will never be as close to the realities of the problems” as the groups they help, but can still help them “access resources, knowledge, and networks that might not otherwise be available to them.”
- Lee hails groundbreaking efforts in conservation and philanthropy, including the adoption of technology and greater engagement with a wider range of stakeholders, including Indigenous-led conservation groups.
- In an interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Lee discusses the Moore Foundation’s achievements in the Amazon, the impacts of recent setbacks to that work, and the role of young people in forging the future they want.
Deforestation of orangutan habitat feeds global palm oil demand, report shows
- Palm oil giant Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) has allegedly sourced the commodity from a plantation responsible for deforesting prime orangutan habitat in Sumatra, which would constitute a violation of the group’s no deforestation and no peatland destruction policies.
- An investigation by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) detected deforestation within the plantation operator’s concession in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, home to some of the rarest species on Earth.
- According to the investigation, palm oil from the concession ended up in RGE’s supply chain, and subsequently the global market; RGE is a key supplier to major brands like Unilever, Kao, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Mondelēz, Nestlé and Colgate-Palmolive.
- RGE’s palm oil arm, APICAL, said it had put a monitoring system in place and carried out risk engagement and supplier engagement measures in its supply chain, but RAN said these efforts were not enough as deforestation-tainted palm oil from the Leuser Ecosystem was still ending up in its supply chain.
$10 million XPRIZE Rainforest contest announces 33 qualifying teams
- Thirty-three teams spanning 16 countries from Brazil to India have qualified for the next stage of the XPRIZE Rainforest competition, the organizers announced on World Rainforest Day.
- The $10 million contest, which launched in 2019 and concludes in 2024, aims to develop scalable and affordable technologies for rainforest preservation.
- Over the next three years, competing teams will leverage existing and emerging technologies including robotics, remote sensing, data analysis and artificial intelligence to develop new biodiversity survey tools and produce real-time insights on rainforest health and value.
New areas of primary forest cleared in Brazil’s ‘lawless’ Lábrea
- Satellite imagery reveals several areas of primary rainforest were cleared alongside agricultural fields in Lábrea municipality in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The deforestation occurred in four areas and covers around 2,115 hectares (5,226 acres), all in close proximity to Indigenous and protected lands.
- Lábrea municipality has been called a “crime factory,” where its remote location and lack of law enforcement act as a catalyst for illegal deforestation and land grabbing.
- Forest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon hit a 14-year high for the month of May, amounting to 118,000 hectares (292,000 acres), an area roughly 20 times the size of Manhattan.
The Brazilian Amazon is burning, again
- In recent weeks, nine major fires have been burning in the Brazilian Amazon, heralding an unsettling start to another fire season—which experts say could be a bad one after a particularly dry year.
- The first major fire of the year occurred on May 19, near the border of Serra Ricardo Franco State Park in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, where all of the nine major fires have occurred averaging around 200 hectares (494 acres) each.
- All of the 2021 fires are on land deforested in 2020, emphasizing the connection between deforestation and fire in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Looking ahead, one expert says we can expect to see patterns similar to last year, with fires in deforested areas early in the season (June through August), with a possible shift to standing forests as the dry season intensifies.
Satellites keep watch over global reef health in a world first
- Scientists working with the Allen Coral Atlas just launched the world’s first global, satellite-based reef-monitoring system.
- This tool can track global coral bleaching events in near-real-time and provide an overall view of trends and changes in coral reef health that can be used to inform conservation efforts and policy.
- A beta version of the system that was piloted in Hawai‘i during the 2019 Pacific heat wave, and helped identify bleaching hotspots as well as resilient corals that could be used for reef restoration.
An owl not seen in over a century makes a brief return — then vanishes again
- Researchers have confirmed the first sighting of a rare owl last seen in Borneo nearly 130 years ago.
- The rediscovery of the Bornean Rajah scops-owl (Otus brookii brookii) came during a chance encounter on May 4, 2016, seven years into a long-term research project on Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia.
- The researchers say the history of speciation in the region could justify naming the Bornean Rajah scops-owl as its own species, distinct from the Sumatran subspecies, O. b. solokensis.
- The Bornean bird is under pressure from deforestation and climate change, which threaten to shrink its habitat and drive it further upslope.
Bolsonaro abandons enhanced Amazon commitment same day he makes it
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro offered up Amazon conservation promises during the April 22 virtual Climate Leaders Summit hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden and attended by heads of state from more than forty nations.
- That same day, Bolsonaro approved Brazil’s 2021 budget that includes a R$240 million ($44 million) annual reduction for the Ministry of the Environment. Conservationists say that the cuts will be utterly devastating for the nation’s deforestation monitoring program.
- The reductions will also impact the monitoring of pollution levels, pesticide contamination (Brazil under Bolsonaro is the biggest user of pesticides in the world), illegal mining, and wildlife trafficking. ICMbio, which oversees 334 of Brazil’s protected areas, also saw cuts.
- While environmentalists were enraged by the slashed ministry budget, the agricultural sector remains largely happy with Bolsonaro whose policies continue to benefit them. However, if Brazil continues along an anti-environmental path, it risks global boycotts of its commodities.
Palm oil firm Digoel Agri said to clear Papuan forest without Indigenous consent
- A palm oil conglomerate has begun clearing the ancestral forests of Indigenous tribes in Indonesia’s Papua region without the locals’ consent, a watchdog group says.
- Subsidiaries of the Digoel Agri group have cleared 64 hectares (158 acres) of forest in the first two months of 2021, according to satellite imagery analyzed by Pusaka, an Indonesian nonprofit.
- Digoel Agri had cleared 164 hectares (405) acres in 2019, before suspending operations for all of last year amid a labor dispute.
- Pusaka alleges that Digoel Agri has failed to obtain the free, prior and informed consent of local Indigenous tribes to operate in the area, which forms part of the Tanah Merah project, slated to become the world’s biggest oil palm plantation.
Cat corridors between protected areas is key to survival of Cerrado’s jaguars
- Only 4% of the jaguar’s critical habitat is effectively protected across the Americas, and in Brazil’s Cerrado biome it’s just 2%.
- A survey in Emas National Park in the Cerrado biome concludes that the protected area isn’t large enough to sustain a viable jaguar population, and that jaguars moving in and out could be exposed to substantial extinction risk in the future.
- The study suggests that improving net immigration may be more important than increasing population sizes in small isolated populations, including by creating dispersal corridors.
- To ensure the corridors’ effectiveness, conservation efforts should focus on resolving the conflict between the jaguars and human communities.
European farmed salmon sector to use only deforestation-free Brazilian soy
- Three Brazilian salmon-feed supply growers CJ Selecta, Caramuru and Imcopa/Cervejaria Petrópolis will produce and harvest only deforestation- and conversion-free soybean supply chain products.
- The change is a result of the first large-scale, protein-producing sector that’s eliminated links to tropical deforestation throughout the supply chain.
- Under the international agreement, no soybean crops produced on land converted after August 2020 will be allowed into supply chains, and the new standards will apply to future purchase contracts.
Monitoring tropical deforestation is now free and easy
- Thanks to Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment and the satellite monitoring group Planet, anyone with an internet connection can now view monthly updates of high-resolution satellite imagery of tropical forests for free.
- At 5-meter (16-foot) resolution, the imagery allows users to see the removal of individual trees and makes it easier to determine the causes of deforestation.
- The high-resolution, high-frequency imagery is especially powerful when combined with early-warning forest loss alerts such as the GLAD alerts visualized on the Global Forest Watch platform.
- The Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) plans to use this new imagery to enhance its real-time monitoring program, quickly detecting and confirming deforestation in the Amazon to inform its partners in the field. MAAP provides several examples of the new technology in action.
New innovations to clean up the impacts of mining
- We bring you two stories that illustrate some of the innovative new ways conservationists are attempting to address the impacts of mining on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast.
- Dr. Manuela Callari, a Mongabay contributing writer who recently wrote about Australia's tens of thousands of abandoned and shuttered mines, discusses novel solutions to restoring native habitat destroyed by mining, and how the industry is finally beginning to work with local and aboriginal communities in creating mine closure plans.
- And Bjorn Bergman, an analyst with the NGO SkyTruth, discusses Project Inambari, an open mapping platform that utilizes satellite radar imagery to detect the impacts of small-scale, illegal mining in the Amazon rainforest.
- Project Inambari was named one of the winners of the Artisanal Mining Challenge, a global competition that recently awarded $750,000 in prizes for innovative solutions.
Soy moratorium averted New Jersey-size loss of Amazon rainforest: Study
- A new study sought to quantify the impact of the Amazon soy moratorium, signed in 2006 by companies accounting for around 90% of the soy sourced from the Brazilian Amazon.
- The companies agreed that they would not purchase soy grown on plots that were recently deforested.
- The research demonstrates that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2006 and 2016 was 35% lower than it would have been without the moratorium, likely keeping 18,000 square kilometers (6,950 square miles) of the Amazon standing.
- Despite the success, observers question whether the ban on soy from deforested areas of the Amazon will prevent the loss of rainforest over the long term.
Palm oil giant Wilmar unfazed as watchdogs cry foul over Papua deforestation
- Forest-monitoring groups have independently flagged the recent cutting down of natural forests inside an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua.
- The concession is managed by PT Medcopapua Hijau Selaras (MPHS), a supplier to Wilmar, the world’s largest palm oil trader, whose customers include Unilever, Kellogg’s and Nestlé.
- Wilmar’s investigation into the reports concluded that the actual deforestation is much smaller than alleged and was done by smallholder farmers and not MPHS.
- The watchdogs dispute this, however, saying the clearing occurred in areas that should have been off-limits under Wilmar’s own stated commitments to sourcing only sustainable palm oil.
Deadly anniversary: Rio Doce, Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, 5 years on
- On November 5, 2015, the Fundão iron mine tailings dam failed, pouring 50 million tons of mud and toxic waste into Brazil’s Rio Doce, killing 19 people, polluting the river, contaminating croplands, devastating fish and wildlife, and polluting drinking water with toxic sludge along 650 kilometers (400 miles) of the waterway.
- Five years on, the industry cleanup has failed to restore the river and watershed, according to residents, with fisheries and fields still poisoned and less productive. Access to clean water also remains difficult, while unexplained health problems have arisen, though some cleanup and livelihood projects are yielding hope.
- Rio Doce valley inhabitants remain frustrated by what they see as a slow response to the environmental disaster by the dam’s owner, Samarco, a joint venture of Vale and BHP Billiton, two of the world’s biggest mining companies, and also by the Brazilian government. Roughly 1.6 million people were originally impacted by the disaster.
- The count of those still affected is unknown, with alleged heavy metal-related health risks cited: Maria de Jesus Arcanjo Peixoto tells of her young grandson, sickened by a mysterious illness: ”We’re left in doubt… But he was three months old when the dam burst. And all the food, the milk, the feed for the cows — it all came from the mud.”
Brazilian and international banks financing global deforestation: Reports
- According to a new report, some of the world’s biggest Brazilian and international banks invested US$153.2 billion in commodities companies whose activities risked harm to forests in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and Central and West Africa since 2016 when the Paris Climate Agreement was signed.
- These investments were made primarily in forest-risk commodities companies that include beef, soy, pulp and paper, palm oil, rubber and timber producers. The big banks are failing to scrutinize and refuse loans to firms profiting from illegal deforestation, said several reports.
- Banco do Brasil offered the most credit (US$30 billion since 2016), for forest-risk commodity operations. BNDES, Brazil’s development bank, provided US$3.8 billion to forest-risk companies. More than half of that amount went to the beef sector, followed closely by the pulp and paper industry.
- “Financial institutions are uniquely positioned to promote actions in the public and private sector and they have an obligation with their shareholders to mitigate their growing credit risks due to the degradation of natural capital and their association with industries that intensively produce carbon,” said one report.
At-risk Cerrado mammals need fully-protected parks to survive: Researchers
- A newly published camera trap study tracked 21 species of large mammal in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna biome from 2012-2017.
- The cameras were deployed in both fully protected state and federal parks and less protected mixed-use areas known as APAs where humans live, farm and ranch.
- The probability of finding large, threatened species in true reserves was 5 to 10 times higher than in the APAs for pumas, tapirs, giant anteaters, maned wolves, white-lipped and collared peccaries, and other Neotropical mammals.
- With half the Cerrado biome’s two million square kilometers of native vegetation already converted to cattle ranches, soy plantations and other croplands, conserving remaining habitat is urgent if large mammals are to survive there. The new study will help land managers better preserve biodiversity.
Forest degradation outpaces deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: Study
- Brazilian Amazon deforestation rates have declined from, and stayed below, their 2003 peak, despite recent increases. However, this decline was offset by a trend of increased forest degradation, according to an analysis of 23 years of satellite data. By 2014, the rate of degradation overtook deforestation, driven by increases in logging and understory burning.
- During the 1992-2014 study period, 337,427 square kilometers suffered a loss of vegetation, compared to 308,311 square kilometers completely cleared, a finding that has serious implications for global greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss.
- Forest degradation has been connected to outbreaks of infectious diseases as a result of increased contact between humans and displaced wildlife. Degradation can also facilitate the emergence of new diseases and some experts warn that the Amazon could be the source of the next pandemic.
- These findings could have major implications for Brazilian national commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement, as well as international agreements and initiatives such as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and REDD+, which rely on forest degradation monitoring.
Singing and whistling cetaceans of southern Africa revealed by bioacoustics
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we’re taking a look at two examples of how bioacoustics studies have discovered things we never knew before about marine life.
- Dr. Tess Gridley joins us to talk about the recent discovery of singing humpback whales in South Africa’s False Bay. Gridley plays us some of the recordings she and her team made documenting humpback songs in False Bay for the first time ever, and discusses the African Bioacoustics Community’s upcoming conference, which she hopes will help inspire even more bioacoustic research focused on African wildlife.
- We’re also joined by Sasha Dines, a PhD student at the University of Stellenbosch who is studying humpback dolphins. Dines’ work is focused on determining whether or not Indian Ocean humpback dolphins make signature whistle calls, which could be used to monitor the dolphins’ via passive acoustic monitoring arrays. She plays us some whistle calls of a humpback dolphin named Herme, and explains how bioacoustic monitoring could help improve not just monitoring but also conservation efforts for these endangered dolphins.
Burning down the house? Enviva’s giant U.S. wood pellet plants gear up
- An outdated Kyoto Climate Agreement policy, grandfathered into the 2015 Paris Agreement, counts electrical energy produced by burning biomass — wood pellets — as carbon neutral. However, new science demonstrates that burning forests for energy is dirtier than coal and not carbon neutral in the short-term.
- But with the carbon accounting loophole still on the books, European Union nations and other countries are rushing to convert coal plants to burn wood pellets, and to count giant biomass energy facilities as carbon neutral — valid on paper even as they add new carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The forest industry argues otherwise.
- It too is capitalizing on the loophole, building large new wood pellet factories and logging operations in places like the U.S. Southeast — cutting down forests, pelletizing trees, and exporting biomass. A case in point are the two giant plants now being built by the Enviva Corporation in Lucedale, Mississippi and Epes, Alabama.
- Enviva and other firms can only make biomass profitable by relying on government subsidies. In the end, forests are lost, carbon neutrality takes decades to achieve, and while communities may see a short-term boost in jobs, they suffer air pollution and the risk of sudden economic collapse if and when the carbon loophole is closed.
Climate conundrum: Could COVID-19 be linked to early Arctic ice melt?
- The COVID-19 pandemic has yielded unexpected environmental benefits, as wildlife explore urban streets and 2020 carbon emissions drop by the largest amount since World War II. But now researchers are wondering if a record hot and sunny start to the Arctic sea ice melt season could be linked to the Coronavirus lockdown.
- The possible cause: a reduction in atmospheric sulphate aerosol pollutants emitted by factories, ships and other sources. Sulphate aerosols increase the amount of clouds and brighten the atmosphere, reflecting more solar heat, thus masking global warming intensity — and making the Arctic cloudier and colder.
- Scientists are working to determine if, and by how much, sulphate aerosols have declined due to the industrial slowdown brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- These figures could help them more precisely determine how aerosols have been inhibiting atmospheric heating around the world, especially in the Arctic. One study found that sulphate aerosol-seeded clouds could be masking about a third of all warming from greenhouse gases. However, the question is far from settled.
Game changer? Antarctic ice melt related to tropical weather shifts: Study
- Scientists predominantly believe that the tropics have the largest influence on global weather. Now, new research suggests that the melting of Antarctic sea ice could impact places as far away as the equator.
- In one of the first studies to look at the link between Antarctic sea ice and tropical weather patterns, researchers found that melting sea ice in Antarctica is likely warming ocean surface temperatures, delivering more rain, and potentially creating El Niño-like effects in the equatorial Pacific.
- Earlier this year, another study found that accelerating sea ice melt in the Arctic could be linked to the intensification of Central Pacific trade winds, the emergence of El Niño events, and the weakening of the North Pacific-Aleutian Low Circulation. So it may be that Arctic and Antarctic changes are synergistically impacting the tropics.
- It’s expected that ice loss at both poles will combine to warm the equatorial Pacific surface ocean by 0.5℃ (0.9℉) and increase rain by more than 0.3 millimeters (0.01 inches) of rain per day in the region.
Shah Selbe on how open source technology is creating new opportunities for conservation
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Shah Selbe, an engineer and technologist who founded Conservify, a conservation tech lab that uses open-source technologies to empower local communities and solve some of the most pressing conservation challenges of our time.
- Selbe is literally a rocket scientist who spent a decade building and launching satellites with Boeing before getting into conservation tech. These days he’s helping deploy technologies like drones, sensor networks, smartphone apps, and acoustic monitoring buoys to stop illegal poaching, monitor protected areas, and protect biodiversity.
- Selbe joins us today to talk about his journey from rocket science to conservation science, the open-source hardware and online platform Conservify is developing called FieldKit, and the conservation tech he’s most excited about.
Any illegal fishing going on around here? Ask an albatross
- Albatrosses fitted with tiny radar-detecting trackers can help spot fishing vessels that have gone “dark” by turning off their AIS onboard tracking systems, a new study has found.
- Over a six-month period, 169 wandering and Amsterdam albatrosses fitted with GPS trackers covered more than 47 million square kilometers in the southern Indian Ocean, detecting radar signals from 353 different boats in the process.
- In international waters, 37% of the boats had no AIS signal, a clue they could be engaged in illegal activity; within countries’ exclusive economic zones, nearly 26% of the boats were without an AIS signal.
- The findings suggest the seabirds could be deployed to patrol the ocean for vessels operating illegally, complementing a growing body of detection methods.
Melting Arctic sea ice may be altering winds, weather at equator: study
- Scientists predominantly believe that the tropics have the largest influence on global weather, but new research suggests that climate change-driven Arctic heating and rapid melting of Arctic sea ice could impact places as far away as the equator.
- A new study, published today, found that accelerating ice melt in recent decades could be linked to Central Pacific trade wind intensification, the emergence of El Niño events, and a weakening of the North Pacific Aleutian Low Circulation — a semi-permanent low pressure system that drives post-tropical cyclones and generates strong storms.
- A 2019 study likewise revealed a close connection between winter Arctic ice concentration over the Greenland-Barents Seas and the El-Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the following winter. Another study out this month found that in prehistoric times, periods of major permafrost thawing were tied to an absence of Arctic summer sea ice.
- Other research has drawn connections between rising Arctic temperatures and changes in the jet stream — a fast-moving river of air that circles the northern polar region. A slowing of the jet stream, and its looping far to the south, is thought to be stalling temperate weather patterns, worsening droughts, storms and other extreme weather.
Brazil knows how to fight Amazon deforestation: Monitoring and law enforcement must be strengthened (commentary)
- Brazil holds unique expertise in using policy to fight deforestation, largely due to the implementation of a policy action plan in the early 2000s. The plan proposed novel policy measures that helped reduce deforestation rates by more than 80% over the course of a decade.
- One of the action plan’s most salient innovations was the adoption of a novel monitoring and law enforcement strategy, which introduced satellite-based forest monitoring to target enforcement action. Data analysis indicates that this strategy avoided the clearing of an average of 27,000 km2 of Amazon forest per year from 2007 through 2016.
- The effectiveness of the monitoring and law enforcement strategy in combating deforestation did not impose a high cost burden: forest protection did not jeopardize local agricultural production, and its expected benefits outweighed the associated policy costs. Brazil must draw on what it has learned from the past to strengthen Amazon conservation today.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
COP25: EU officials say biomass burning policy to come under critical review
- At a COP25 climate summit press conference on Thursday, December 12, Frans Timmermans, executive vice president of the EU and a Dutch politician answered a Mongabay question concerning the UN biomass carbon accounting loophole.
- When asked if the EU would close the loophole, he said: “The issue of biofuels needs to be looked at very carefully. We have to make sure that what we do with biofuels is sustainable and does not do more harm than that it does good.” A second EU official expressed a similar view. The issue won’t likely be reviewed until after 2020.
- This is perhaps the first acknowledgement by a top developed world official that the biomass loophole is a potential problem. The loophole encourages power plants that burn coal (whose carbon emissions are counted) to be converted to biomass — the burning of wood pellets (whose carbon emissions are counted as carbon neutral).
- Recent science shows that burning wood pellets is worse than burning coal, since more pellets must be burned to produce equivalent energy levels to coal. Also replacing plantation forests to achieve carbon neutrality takes many decades, time not available to a world that needs to quickly cut emissions over the next 20 years.
COP25: Wood pellet CEO claims biomass carbon neutrality, despite science
- Research has conclusively shown that burning biomass for energy is not carbon neutral. However, a biomass carbon accounting loophole currently enforced by the UN and the Paris Agreement says that burning trees in the form of wood pellets produces zero emissions, and so is classified with solar and wind power.
- Mongabay gained an exclusive interview with Will Gardiner, CEO of Drax, the United Kingdom’s largest biomass energy plant. He dismisses the science and asserts that his firm and $7.6 billion industry are meeting “a responsibility to our community, our shareholders and our colleagues to be a part of the escalating climate crisis.”
- Bill Moomaw — an international researcher on biomass-for-energy, and author of forest reports for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — counters Gardiner’s arguments: “It’s all about the money. The wood pellet industry is a monster out of control,” he said when interviewed at COP25.
- Despite repeated pleas from scientists, COP25 climate summit negotiators in Madrid failed to address the biomass carbon accounting loophole, as they did at COP24 — a lapse that, if allowed to persist, could help push emissions above a 2 degree Celsius planetwide average increase that the UN says could bring climate catastrophe.
Hopes dim as COP25 delegates dicker over Article 6 and world burns: critics
- Even as half a million protesters demonstrate outside, UN climate summit negotiators inside Madrid’s COP25 seem blind to the urgency of the climate crisis. In fact, instead of making effective progress, the rules they’re shaping to carry out the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 could worsen carbon emissions, not staunch them.
- For example, Article 6 doesn’t include rules to protect native forests. Instead it could promote turning forests into monoculture tree plantations — providing minimal carbon sequestration and no ecosystem services, while devastating biodiversity. Some critics think the policy may have been shaped by logging interests.
- The so-called biomass carbon accounting loophole is also not up for discussion. Its continuance will allow the burning of biomass wood pellets at power plants, energy production classified by the UN as carbon neutral. However, establised science has found that industrial biomass burning will add significantly to carbon emissions.
- According to activists at COP25, delegates are working to hide emissions and allow UN carbon accounting loopholes. One key aspect of Article 6 found in the original Paris Agreement which guaranteed “the protection of human rights” was deleted from a revised draft Saturday night, as was verbiage assuring civil society and indigenous consultations.
Amazon’s giant South American river turtle holding its own, but risks abound
- The arrau, or giant South American River turtle (Podocnemis expansa), inhabits the Amazon and Orinoco rivers and their tributaries. A recent six nation survey assessed the health of populations across the region in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.
- The species numbered in the tens of millions in the 19th century. Much reduced today, P. expansa is doing fairly well in river systems with conservation programs (the Tapajós, Guaporés, Foz do Amazonas, and Purus) and not so well in others (the Javaés and Baixo Rio Branco, and the Trombetas, even though it has monitoring).
- The study registered more than 147,000 females protected or monitored by 89 conservation initiatives and programs between 2012 and 2014. Out of that total, two thirds were in Brazil (109,400), followed by Bolivia (30,000), Peru (4,100), Colombia (2,400), Venezuela (1,000) and Ecuador (6).
- The greatest historical threat to the arrau stems from eggs and meat being popular delicacies, which has led to trafficking. Hydroelectric dams and large-scale mining operations also put the animals at risk — this includes mining noise impairing turtle communication. Climate change could be the biggest threat in the 21st century.
World is fast losing its cool: Polar regions in deep trouble, say scientists
- As representatives of the world’s nations gather in Madrid at COP 25 this week to discuss global warming policy, a comprehensive new report shows how climate change is disproportionately affecting the Arctic and Antarctic — the Arctic especially is warming tremendously faster than the rest of the world.
- If the planet sees a rise in average temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius, the polar regions will be the hardest hit ecosystems on earth, according to researchers, bringing drastic changes to the region. By the time the lower latitudes hit that mark, it’s projected the Arctic will see temperature increases of 4 degrees Celsius.
- In fact, polar regions are already seeing quickening sea ice melt, permafrost thaws, record wildfires, ice shelves calving, and impacts on cold-adapted species — ranging from Arctic polar bears to Antarctic penguins. What starts in cold areas doesn’t stay there: sea level rise and temperate extreme weather are both linked to polar events.
- The only way out of the trends escalating toward a climate catastrophe at the poles, say scientists, is for nations to begin aggressively reducing greenhouse gas emissions now and embracing sustainable green energy technologies and policies. It remains to be seen whether the negotiators at COP 25 will embrace such solutions.
COP25 may put climate at greater risk by failing to address forests
- COP25, originally slated for Brazil, then Chile, but starting today in Madrid comes as global temperatures, sea level rise, wildfires, coral bleaching, extreme drought and storms break new planetary records.
- But delegates have set a relatively low bar for the summit, with COP25’s primary goal to determine rules under Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement for creating carbon markets among nations, cities and corporations as a means of incentivizing emission-reduction strategies.
- Policy experts warn that global forest conservation is not yet being actively incentivized as part of carbon market discussions, a possible lapse apparently backed by Brazil and the government of Jair Bolsonaro which has declared its plan to develop the Amazon basin — the world’s largest remaining rainforest and vital to sequestering carbon to curb climate change.
- COP25 also seems unlikely to address the UN biomass carbon accounting loophole, which allows nations to convert obsolete coal plants to burn wood pellets to produce energy, with the carbon emitted counted as “zero emissions” equivalent to solar and wind. Scientists warn that biomass burning, far from being carbon neutral, is actually worse than burning coal.
Amazon deforestation rises to 11 year high in Brazil
- Official data published today by Brazil’s National Space Research Institute INPE shows deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between August 1, 2018 and July 31, 2019 amounted to 9,762 square kilometers, an increase of 30 percent over last year.
- The increase in deforestation was expected given global attention to large-scale fires that blackened the skies above Brazil’s largest city this past August. Deforestation tracking systems had been showing increased forest clearing throughout 2019.
- Deforestation in 2019 was the highest since 2008 and represents a doubling in forest loss over 2012.
- Environmentalists fear that deforestation could continue to accelerate given Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s push to open the Amazon to more logging, large-scale mining, and industrial agriculture.
The Arctic and climate change (1979 – 2019): What the ice record tells us
- This story has been updated: 2019’s Arctic ice melt season started out with record heat and rapid ice loss. Though cooler weather prevailed in August, stalling the fall, by mid-September ice extent was dropping dramatically once again. Then this week, 2019 raced from fourth to second place — now behind only 2012, the record minimum.
- With 2019 providing no reversal over past years, scientists continue to document and view the Arctic Death Spiral with increasing alarm. This story reviews the 40-year satellite record, along with some of the recent findings as to how Arctic ice declines are impacting the global climate.
- Researchers are increasingly certain that melting ice and a warming Arctic are prime factors altering the northern jet stream, a river of air that circles the Arctic. A more erratic jet stream — with increased waviness and prone to stalling — is now thought to be driving the increasingly dire, extreme global weather seen in recent years.
- The 40-year satellite record of rapidly vanishing Arctic ice — as seen in a new NASA video embedded within this article — is one of the most visible indicators of the intensifying climate crisis, and a loud warning to world leaders meeting at the UN in New York next week, of the urgent need to drastically cut carbon emissions.
UN and policymakers, wake up! Burning trees for energy is not carbon neutral (commentary)
- On September 23, the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement will gather at the United Nations for a Climate Action Summit to step up their carbon reduction pledges in order to prevent catastrophic climate change, while also kicking off Climate Week events in New York City.
- However, the policymakers, financiers, and big green groups organizing these events will almost certainly turn a blind eye toward renewable energy policies that subsidize forest wood burned for energy as if it is a zero emissions technology like wind or solar.
- Scientists have repeatedly warned that burning forests is not in fact carbon neutral, and that doing so puts the world at risk of overshooting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.
- But that message has fallen on deaf ears, as lucrative renewable energy subsidies have driven exponential growth in use of forest wood as fuel. The world’s nations must stop subsidizing burning forest biomass now to protect forests, the climate, and our future. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author.
Protected areas best conserve mammalian diversity when connected with corridors, biologged weasels show
- For protected area (PA) networks to be an effective conservation tool, they should be well-connected to allow species movement through unprotected landscapes, but questions remain on what configuration of natural features can best facilitate animal movement.
- A recent study compared three theories of animal movement (structurally intact corridors, least-cost paths, and stepping stones) by analyzing the fine-scale movements of GPS-tagged fishers, a member of the weasel family. They found the tagged fishers consistently moved along structurally intact, natural corridors across a PA network.
- With the Aichi 2020 Biodiversity Targets in mind, the authors highlight that simply increasing the number of protected areas alone may not achieve the objectives of the protected area network amidst an increasingly fragmented landscape; the conservation of natural corridors between PAs may be equally important, something for future planners to consider.
‘No place to hide’ for illegal fishing fleets as surveillance satellites prepare for lift-off
- A low-cost satellite revolution is paving the way for real-time monitoring of fishing vessels using synthetic-aperture radar (SAR).
- SAR allows researchers to monitor ‘dark vessels’ that aren’t transmitting Automatic Identification Signals (AIS) location data.
- Disabling or manipulating AIS transmitters is a tactic commonly used by vessels engaged in illegal fishing activity.
Snow leopard population overestimated in Nepal? DNA study suggests it may be
- Researchers conducted a large-scale survey of potential snow leopard habitat in Nepal to re-estimate the species’ population density using the non-invasive technique of collecting environmental DNA from scat samples combined with standard genetic analyses.
- This method enabled the researchers to sample a larger, more representative, area than many previous studies, often conducted in prime leopard habitats; they also found that they could obtain reliable DNA from scat samples.
- Previous studies on which conservation policies have been based may have over-estimated the big cat’s population. The researchers say similar studies are needed to more accurately estimate the population of snow leopards in Nepal and 11 other range countries.
2019 in line for second lowest Arctic sea ice extent record
- 2019 has seen constant heat and melt conditioning of the Arctic sea ice, resulting in record, and near record, daily and monthly extent and volume stats over much of the melt season. The average volume for July, for example, fell to 8,800 cubic kilometers (2,111 cubic miles), a new record low.
- Whether 2019 will set a new all-time extent or volume record at the September sea ice minimum remains to be seen, with ice extent shrinking less quickly since mid-August, possibly putting this year in second place, though certainly among the top five record lowest minimums.
- The big news this year was the relentless heat in the Arctic, with record heat waves over Alaska, Scandinavia and Greenland, resulting in massive glacial runoff into the sea. Wildfires were rampant, with reindeer and fish including salmon possibly adversely impacted by very hot air and water temperatures.
- Whether or not 2019 sets a new sea ice extent or volume low record this September is incidental. What this year dramatically showed is that the climate crisis has anchored itself firmly in the Arctic, and shows no signs of easing over the long-haul.
Tests show multi-rotor UAVs can improve cetacean behavioral studies
- Researchers assessing the utility of small, multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to survey and study humpback whales found that video data collected from a UAV improved upon data recorded by an expert observer from a research vessel, a standard technique.
- The observer mischaracterized certain behaviors, primarily socializing and nurturing, as other activities, such as traveling or resting, that the aerial viewpoint of the UAV captured clearly, even when the animals were below the surface.
- The whales did not show changes in behavior when the UAV approached or remained present at 30 meters above them.
- Their results suggest that small UAVs add value to cetacean behavioral research as a non-invasive research tool that can capture information that is otherwise difficult to detect from the angle and distance of a ship or shore observer.
Future of Amazon deforestation data in doubt as research head sacked
- The Brazilian government and the world have relied on the INPE (Brazilian National Institute of Space Research) satellite monitoring system to track deforestation since 1988, without controversy. INPE’s data gathering program has been hailed as one of the best such operations in the tropics.
- However, after INPE reported a major uptick in the rate of Brazilian Amazon deforestation in June and July 2019, as compared with the same months in 2018, the Bolsonaro administration responded angrily by accusing the agency of manipulating data, of lying, and of being in conspiracy with international NGOs.
- On August 2, the president fired Ricardo Magnus Osório Galvão, the head of INPE, leaving officials inside the institution concerned for the future of the satellite monitoring program. The government has repeatedly said it plans to develop a costly, privatized deforestation tracking system which would replace INPE.
- Galvão’s removal triggered an outcry from scientists, NGOs and Brazilian federal prosecutors who are concerned over the threat to the future accuracy of Amazon deforestation monitoring. The Bolsonaro administration plans to announce a replacement shortly.
New toolkit identifies multiple species from environmental DNA
- Researchers have developed a DNA analysis toolkit designed to speed the identification of the multiple species in a biological community by analyzing environmental DNA from a sample of water or soil.
- To confirm the presence of a species at a site, the tool compares its genetic barcode (short DNA sequence) to barcodes of known species in one of several reference databases.
- The toolkit’s advantage is its ability to quickly process many barcode sequences, at multiple analysis locations on the gene, that enable it to identify the species of the DNA sequences of many organisms at the same time.
Baby whale wears a camera, reveals its travel and nursing behavior: video
- A video taken by a camera carried by a baby whale shows underwater nursing behavior from the calf’s perspective.
- The CATS Cam camera used in the filming incorporates multiple environmental sensors, such as depth and temperature, as well as movement and acceleration by the calf.
- The unusual perspective may help researchers better understand the nursing process of a baby whale, including surfacing to breathe while its mother remains underwater and suckling from mammary slits on each side of its mom.
Conservation tech prize with invasive species focus announces finalists
- The Con X Tech Prize announced its second round will fund 20 finalists, selected from 150 applications, each with $3,500 to create their first prototypes of designs that use technology to address a conservation challenge.
- Seven of the 20 teams focused their designs on reducing impacts from invasive species, while the others addressed a range of conservation issues, from wildlife trafficking to acoustic monitoring to capturing freshwater plastic waste in locally-built bamboo traps.
- Conservation X Labs (CXL), which offers the prize, says the process provides winners with very early-stage funding, a rare commodity, and recognition of external approval, each of which has potential to motivate finalists and translate into further funding.
- Finalists can also compete for a grand prize of $20,000 and product support from CXL.
Experts deny alleged manipulation of Amazon satellite deforestation data
- The Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE) issues annual Amazon deforestation reports via its PRODES satellite monitoring system (which relies on NASA Landsat satellite imaging), while the DETER system issues monthly deforestation/degradation alerts (which rely on Sino-Brazilian satellites).
- While experts consider INPE’s monitoring systems among the best in the tropics, ministers in the Bolsonaro administration have insinuated that the deforestation data may be manipulated. Experts have denied this, and note that INPE findings align well with those collected by NGOs Imazon and ISA, and Global Forest Watch (GFW).
- All of the data collected so far from various sources show an upswing in deforestation since Jair Bolsonaro’s election win. However, definitive and precise statistics require year-to-year comparisons, not monthly ones, and won’t be available until later in 2019.
- In March, Brazil’s environment minister pressed for a new but costly private deforestation tracking system. In June, the open-access platform MapBiomas — a network of NGOs, universities and tech firms, along with Google — launched a system to compile data from INPE, ISA, Imazon and GFW to produce definitive deforestation data.
Arctic in free fall: 2019 sea ice volume sinks to near record for June
- High temperatures and relentless sun caused Arctic sea ice volume and extent to plummet this June.
- The June 2019 monthly average for Arctic sea ice volume was 15,900 cubic kilometers (3,814 cubic miles), just short of the monthly average record set in 2017. But by the end of the month this year, a new daily record occurred as volume loss advanced rapidly, leaving just 12,047 cubic kilometers (2,890 cubic square miles) of sea ice on June 30 — that’s 106 cubic kilometers (25 cubic miles) lower than the previous record for this time of year.
- On July 10, Arctic sea ice extent for 2019 fell to 8.338 million square kilometers (3.219 million square miles), surpassing 2012’s record low of 8.359 million square kilometers (3.227 million square miles) for this time of year.
- While changing weather always dictates sea ice minimum extent and volume in September, scientists say that if conditions remain favorable for melt and ice export to the North Atlantic, then 2019 could beat all records. And because what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay there, that could mean trouble for the world’s weather.
Film that fish: Stereo-video speeds surveys of marine fish communities
- Researchers use underwater visual surveys to assess the sizes of fish in marine communities and their associated habitats, but diver-based data collection is time-consuming and requires expertise, and results may vary among different data collectors.
- A multinational research team recently published the first guide to help researchers using diver-operated stereo-video methods (stereo-DOVs) to standardize surveys of fish assemblages (species and their abundances) and their associated habitat.
- The video provides a permanent, shareable record of each survey transect, including the species and numbers of fish seen, while the stereo option allows researchers to measure fish using overlapping images.
- The guide provides information on appropriate equipment; designing a stereo‐DOV if needed; operating it during underwater studies; processing the video data after collection; and analyzing fish behavior, population features and habitat in the resulting video.
New eDNA sampling system aims for cleaner, more efficient field research
- Researchers tested a new self-preserving filter housing system that automatically preserves eDNA from water samples, while reducing the risk of DNA contamination and plastic waste.
- Scientists who use eDNA currently rely on cumbersome cold storage or liquid preservatives and single-use sampling equipment to preserve their eDNA samples, which are highly sensitive to degradation as well as contamination.
- The new system incorporates a hydrophilic plastic material in its filter housing that physically pulls water from the sample without having to add chemicals.
- In a six-month test, it allowed data collectors to preserve samples quickly and easily, at ambient temperature and with far reduced plastic waste, preventing degradation for weeks and with slightly higher amounts of captured DNA than a standard method.
Sponges supply DNA for new method of monitoring aquatic biodiversity
- Tracking environmental DNA (eDNA) is fast becoming a popular method of monitoring aquatic biodiversity, but current methods are expensive and cumbersome.
- Filter-feeding sponges can act as natural sieves to collect and concentrate eDNA from seawater.
- Using sponge samples collected from the Antarctic and the Mediterranean Sea, researchers identified 31 organisms, including fish, penguins, and seals, clearly separated by location.
- Although the method is still a proof of concept, it may lead to the development of simpler, less expensive technologies for aquatic eDNA collection.
Angola pledges $60m to fund landmine clearance in national parks
- The Angolan government has announced a $60 million commitment to clear landmines in Luengue-Luiana and Mavinga national parks in the country’s southeast.
- The region is part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area — home to incredible natural biodiversity, but also one of the most heavily mined regions of Angola.
- International funding for landmine clearance has fallen by 80 percent over the last 10 years, and without new funding Angola will miss its target of clearing all landmines by 2025.
- The HALO Trust, a demining NGO, and the Angolan government hope that clearance of landmines will stimulate conservation in southeastern Angola and provide alternative livelihoods such as ecotourism to alleviate poverty and diversify the country’s economy away from oil.
Carbon to burn: UK net-zero emissions pledge undermined by biomass energy
- The United Kingdom and the European Union are setting goals to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But that declaration is deeply flawed, analysts say, due to a long-standing United Nations carbon accounting loophole that turns a blind eye toward the conversion of coal burning power plants to burning wood pellets.
- While the cutting of trees to convert them to wood pellets to produce energy is ultimately carbon neutral — if an equal number of new trees are planted — the regrowth process requires 50 to 100 years. That means wood pellets burned today, and in coming decades, will be adding a massive carbon load to the atmosphere.
- That carbon will add significantly to global warming — bringing more sea level rise, extreme weather, and perhaps, climate catastrophe — even as official carbon counting by the UN provides a false sense of security that we are effectively reducing emissions to curb climate change.
- Unless the biomass loophole is dealt with, the risk is very real that the world could easily overshoot its Paris Agreement targets, and see temperatures rise well above the 1.5 degrees Celsius safe limit. At present, there is no official move to address the biomass loophole.
New tool helps monitor forest change within commodities supply chains
- With commercial agriculture driving some 40 percent of tropical deforestation, more than 300 major companies involved in the commodities trade have pledged to avoid deforestation in their supply chains.
- To help the companies and financial institutions adhere to these commitments, Global Forest Watch (GFW) has launched a new forest monitoring tool called GFW Pro.
- Using tree cover change information from GFW’s interactive maps, the new desktop application enables users to observe and monitor deforestation and fires within individual farms and supply sheds or across portfolios of properties and political jurisdictions.
- To encourage use by businesses, the new tool presents the information in graphs and charts to companies for easy and regular monitoring, as they might monitor daily changes in stock prices.
Predator-free by 2050? High-tech hopes for New Zealand’s big conservation dream
- To preserve New Zealand’s remaining native biodiversity, the country has begun an ambitious nationwide program to eliminate its most damaging non-native invasive predators — rats, stoats and possums — by 2050.
- To carry out this mammoth task, government and private entities across the country are applying new technologies to existing detection, exclusion, trapping, poisoning and other strategies used to reduce the numbers of harmful predators.
- The program has wide public support, though some effective technologies, particularly gene editing, are controversial; recognition of the importance of public support, as well as cost and effectiveness, help guide the program’s development.
Arctic sea ice extent just hit a record low for early June; worse may come
- The lowest Arctic sea ice extent in the 40-year satellite record for this time of year was set on June 10 with just 10.901 million square kilometers of ice remaining, dipping just below the previous record set in 2016 of 10.919 million square kilometers. This year’s record is likely to deepen at least for the coming days.
- Some scientists theorize that declining Arctic summer sea ice extent, which has fallen by roughly half since 1979, could be generating a cascade of harmful effects: as the Arctic melts, the heat differential between the Far North and temperate zone lessens, causing the jet stream (high altitude Northern Hemisphere winds), to falter.
- As the polar jet stream loses energy, it can fail to hug the Arctic Circle. Instead it starts to dip deeply into the temperate zone forming great waves which can block and stall weather patterns there, bringing long punishing bouts of rain and floods like those seen in the Midwest this spring, or extended heatwaves and drought.
- Arctic weather variations are too complex to predict in advance, but 2019 has made a strong start toward possibly beating 2012 for the lowest annual ice extent record. Records aside, the Arctic sea ice death spiral and the extreme weather it can trigger are adversely impacting agriculture, infrastructure, economics and human lives.
Chile pledges to make its fishing vessel tracking data public
- In mid-May Chile finalized an agreement to publicly share proprietary data from its satellite system for monitoring fishing boats via Global Fishing Watch (GFW), an online interactive mapping platform that tracks ship movements across the globe.
- The country joins Indonesia and Peru, whose data already appear on the GFW platform, as well as Namibia, Panama and Costa Rica, which have pledged to do so.
- Countries are motivated to go public by the prospect of enhancing their ability to enforce fishing regulations, keep an eye on foreign fishing fleets operating outside or transiting through their waters, and, in Chile’s case, prevent the spread of disease in its salmon aquaculture industry.
Monitoring hack shines a light on fishing boats operating under cover of dark
- A new report shows that many of the fishing vessels that operate at night in Indonesian waters don’t broadcast their location, masking a potentially massive problem of illegal and undocumented fishing.
- Though many of these boats fall below the 30 gross tonnage threshold for which the use of the vessel monitoring system (VMS) is required, the study highlights the indication of “dark vessels” where larger boats have switched off the tracking device, likely to avoid detection.
- The researchers suggest that if the matching of two data sets in near real time becomes available, it would greatly help authorities identify these dark vessels and crack down on illegal fishing.
Models, maps, and citizen scientists working to save the Great Barrier Reef
- As global warming drives more events that impact coral reefs, managing the Great Barrier Reef’s resilience demands comprehensive and detailed mapping of the reef bed.
- Available surveys and maps with geographically referenced field data have been limited and fragmented.
- A diverse research team recently demonstrated a successful approach, applying statistics to image data to build predictive models, integrate diverse datasets on reef conditions, and provide a comprehensive map of the Reef that informs reef management decisions.
Counting on eDNA for a faster, easier way to count coral
- Environmental DNA, known as eDNA, is genetic material sloughed off by animals or plants and found in soil, air, or water, and allows scientists to collect and analyze genetic material without having to retrieve it from a species directly.
- Researchers in Hawaii found that the amount of eDNA in water samples is related to coral abundance and thus can be used to conduct accurate surveys of local coral populations using less time and money than sending SCUBA divers down to do the surveys.
- Coral reefs have the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem globally and are one of the most threatened, thanks to climate change and direct human impact. eDNA could help researchers evaluate coral abundance and health more quickly, easily and cost-effectively.
‘Landscape of fearlessness’: bushbuck emboldened following top-predator decline in Mozambique
- Bushbuck in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park have become increasingly fearless in their foraging habits, changing from foraging exclusively in woodland areas to braving open floodplains.
- Following years of civil war, populations of large herbivores and carnivores in Gorongosa declined by over 90 percent, with some top predators completely extirpated.
- Researchers from Princeton University conducted experiments using state-of-the-art equipment to establish whether the bushbucks’ use of floodplains for foraging was due to the decline in predation threat.
- Following experimentally simulated predation events, bushbuck significantly increased their use of tree cover, indicating that the reintroduction of top predators would restore a ‘landscape of fear’.
Slave labor found at second Starbucks-certified Brazilian coffee farm
- In July 2018, Brazilian labor inspectors found six employees at the Cedro II farm in Minas Gerais state working in conditions analogous to slavery, including 17-hour shifts. The farm was later added to Brazil’s “Dirty List” of employers found to be utilizing slavery-like labor conditions.
- The Cedro II farm’s coffee production operation had been quality certified by both Starbucks and Nestlé-controlled brand Nespresso. The companies had bought coffee from the farm, but ceased working with it when they learned it was dirty listed.
- 187 employers are on Brazil’s current Dirty List, which is released biannually by what was previously the Ministry of Labor, and is now part of the Ministry of Economy; 48 newly listed companies or individual employers on the April 2019 Dirty List were monitored between 2014 and 2018.
Creating a high-tech island to save one of the world’s rarest birds
- Scientists in New Zealand are combining tracking, genomics, and drone technologies to save the kākāpō, the giant flightless parrot nearly eradicated by invasive predators, such as dogs, rats, and cats brought by human settlers.
- Data loggers on a predator-free island read information emitted by transmitters worn by each of the birds and send the data to the research team; the information tells researchers where birds are nesting, when birds are sick, and when (and with whom) a given bird mated.
- The team supplements natural kākāpō breeding with artificial insemination, including flying a sperm-carrying drone that can swiftly move sperm from a male to an appropriate female across the island, which the researchers believe helps keep the sperm more viable when it reaches the female.
- For this, scientists “match” male and female kākāpō using genetic analysis to determine how closely related the two birds are and choose mates that are most distantly related. The research team is reviewing genomic data from all adult kākāpō for clues about fertility and disease.
‘Judas’ snakes lead scientists on a high-tech Easter egg hunt for pythons
- Scientists are exploring various technologies to address the spread of highly invasive Burmese pythons, which have devastated native mammal and bird populations across much of southern Florida.
- Researchers who recently captured a large pregnant Burmese python did so using the “Judas” technique: the radio-tagging of adult pythons that will approach others of the opposite sex during the breeding season, “betraying” them to the research teams.
- More recently, separate research teams have trialed the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) to determine the spatial distribution, range limits, and expansion rates of Burmese pythons in the region. They found python eDNA within a wildlife refuge, indicating that the invaded area extends further north than previously thought and that pythons are likely resident there.
Lift-off for thermal-imaging system to estimate wildlife populations
- A research team hailed a breakthrough in their imaging system’s ability to detect and identify orangutans in tropical rainforest.
- They now plan for computer algorithms to report back what a thermal camera has seen in real time.
- The researchers believe the system could also be used to spot poachers targeting rare species.
Solving the mystery of the UK’s vanishing hen harriers
- The numbers of breeding hen harriers, one of England’s rarest birds and a protected species, dropped sharply in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
- To better understand why hen harriers were vanishing, researchers tracked the movements of 58 birds using satellite-based tags in conjunction with remote sensing land management data.
- Birds with tags that stopped transmitting spent their last week of life predominantly on moors where hunters shoot grouse and were 10 times more likely to disappear or die when grouse moors dominated their ranges, suggesting they were killed.
- The findings indicated that 72 percent of the tagged harriers were either confirmed or considered very likely to have been illegally killed.
Arctic in trouble: Sea ice melt falls to record lows for early April
- As of April 9, the Arctic had around 13.6 million square kilometers (5.3 million square miles) of ice cover, putting it firmly below any other year on record for the same time of year, and nearly two weeks ahead of previous early April records set in 2017 and 2018.
- The implications of such low sea ice extent for this time of year is concerning to scientists. However, predicting seasonal ice melt is very difficult, and changes in Arctic weather could cause the early melt to stall, or even reverse to some degree.
- Two new Arctic studies are also troubling. Researchers have found that between 1998 and 2017, seventeen percent less ice exited shallow continental shelf seas — nurseries for sea ice — to reach the Central Arctic Ocean and Fram Strait. This loss in ice being transported could have serious implications for Arctic sea ice melt and impact biodiversity as well.
- A second study found that rising Arctic air temperatures are driving change across the entire ecosystem. Hotter temperatures are impacting forest and tundra growing seasons, increasing wildfires, boosting rain and snowfall, and melting ice — shifting the region from its 20th century condition into an unprecedented state.
Fishing for sharks in Honduras’s sanctuary seas: Q&A with biologist Gabriela Ochoa
- In 2011, Honduras declared the creation of a shark sanctuary encompassing all its waters.
- A 2016 decree allows for the sale of sharks caught incidentally, but in the absence of monitoring and inspection, hundreds of sharks are still being caught daily during certain seasons to supply an Easter-time demand for dried fish.
- Mongabay spoke with marine biologist and conservationist Gabriela Ochoa, who studies Honduras’s ongoing shark fishery, about the trade.
Combining artificial intelligence and citizen science to improve wildlife surveys
- Migratory species play a key role in the health of the Serengeti ecosystem in East Africa, but monitoring their populations is a time- and labor-intensive task.
- Scientists studying these wildebeest populations compared expert observer counts of aerial imagery to corresponding counts by both volunteer citizen scientists and deep learning algorithms.
- Both novel methods were able to produce accurate wildebeest counts from the images with minor modifications, the algorithms doing so faster than humans.
- Use of automated object detection algorithms requires prior “training” with specific data sets, which in this case came from the volunteer counts, suggesting that the two methods are both useful and complementary.
As Arctic neared 2019 winter max, Bering Sea was virtually ice-free
- Though yet to be called officially by scientists, Arctic sea ice extent appeared to hit its annual maximum on March 13 when it covered 14.777 million square kilometers. The 2019 max stats are among the top ten lowest on record, and well below the 1981-2010 average maximum extent of 15.64 million square kilometers.
- One thing that stood out this winter was the extraordinarily low amounts of ice in the Bering Sea at the start of March, surpassing record lows seen in 2018 for the same dates. Seasonal ice in the Bering Sea is already known to be volatile, but it’s getting worse under climate change.
- A new study also found something remarkable on the opposite side of the Arctic: in recent years, according to the research, Greenland has been receiving more rain, including in winter.
- These rain events are triggering sudden, rapid ice melt and are responsible for a tremendous amount of annual runoff. Ultimately, these rains could prove catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet, and for sea level rise.
Defending the Amazon’s uncontacted peoples: Q&A with Julio Cusurichi
- Julio Cusurichi, a Shipibo-Conibo leader, has been working to protect the peoples and forests of his native Madre de Dios region in southeastern Peru.
- Increasingly, illegal gold miners as well as illegal loggers and drug traffickers are proving to be an existential threat for the indigenous people of the region, which concentrates some of the Amazon’s greatest biodiversity.
- In recent years Cusurichi led a successful campaign to create a legally recognized indigenous territory and helped establish a network of indigenous forest monitors when the government abandoned the effort.
- Now, he is working to gain a greater role for indigenous peoples in governing their territories. “The goal is for indigenous people to be the protagonists,” he told Mongabay on a recent visit to Peru’s capital, Lima. “We have to administer the Amazon regions that are our ancestral territories and not just leave it to the government.”
Something smells fishy: Scientists uncover illegal fishing using shark tracking devices
- Sharks become unlikely detectives as marine ecologists discover a link between their acoustic telemetry data and the presence of illegal fishing vessels.
- Researchers acoustically tagged 95 silvertip and grey reef sharks to assess whether the creation of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) Marine Protected Area was helping to protect these species.
- Detailed in a recently released paper, the almost simultaneous loss of 15 acoustic tags coincided with the capture of two illegal fishing vessels, arrested for having 359 sharks on board.
- While helping to map sharks’ movements around the reef, scientists expect that they will be able to use data collected from the acoustic tags to predict the presence of illegal fishing vessels.
Reducing human-elephant encounters with calls, texts, and digital signs
- The Hassan district of Karnataka, India has been a hotbed of human-elephant encounters for years and a challenge for forest authorities, who have been translocating crop-raiding elephants for decades.
- Researchers have replicated an elephant alert system that combines signs, voice calls, and text messaging used in the elephant corridors of neighboring Tamil Nadu’s Valparai region to reduce negative interactions between people and elephants in Hassan.
- Using familiar technologies, the new system has reduced annual human fatalities in the region from several to nearly zero.
EU sued to stop burning trees for energy; it’s not carbon neutral: plaintiffs
- Plaintiffs in five European nations and the U.S. filed suit Monday, 4 March, in the European General Court in Luxembourg against the European Union. At issue is the EU’s rapid conversion of coal-burning powerplants to burn wood pellets and chips, a process known as bioenergy. Activists see the EUs bioenergy policies as reckless and endangering the climate.
- Bioenergy was classified as carbon neutral under the Kyoto Protocol, meaning that nations don’t need to count wood burning for energy among their Paris Agreement carbon emissions. However, studies over the last 20 years have found that bioenergy, while technically carbon neutral, is not neutral within the urgent timeframe in which the world must cut emissions.
- In essence, it takes many decades for new tree growth to re-absorb the amount of carbon released from burning mature trees in a single day. But the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change last October said that the world has just 12 years – not decades – to drastically cut emissions or face likely disastrous temperature rise and climate impacts.
- The activists filing suit face a difficult fight. Only EU member states and EU institutions are generally given standing to challenge legislative acts. To gain standing, they will have to prove that they are being impacted by the EU’s bioenergy policies. The activists say that ending bioenergy coal plant conversions is vital if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Marine protected areas are getting SMART (commentary)
- This year, World Wildlife Day will celebrate life in the world’s oceans. It’s a fitting tribute. Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the world’s surface, harbor hundreds of thousands of species, and provide important resources to coastal communities that house more than 35 percent of the global population.
- Oceans also face significant threats, including overexploitation. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are central to the efforts to protect Earth’s seas and the wildlife that call them home. In recent years, there has been a surge in their creation.
- In order for this strategy to succeed, though, new and existing MPAs must be managed effectively. The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) was developed by the SMART Partnership, a collaboration of nine global conservation organizations to improve the performance of protected areas, both on land and at sea, and better use limited resources.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
The odor side of otters: Tech reveals species’ adaptations to human activity
- Recent studies of an elusive otter species living in the highly modified mangroves and reclaimed lands on the coast of Goa, India offer new insights into otter behavior that could inform future conservation efforts.
- Researchers have studied these adaptable otters with camera traps, ground GPS surveys, and satellite images; they’re now testing drone photogrammetry to improve the accuracy of their habitat mapping.
- Using data gathered over a period of time, the researchers aim to pinpoint changes in the landscape and, in combination with the behavioral data gathered by the camera traps, understand how otters are reacting to these changes.
AI and public data identify fishing behavior to protect hungry seabirds
- In an effort to reduce albatross deaths as bycatch of longline fishing, Global Fishing Watch (GFW) and Birdlife International researchers are using machine learning models to determine if fishing vessels are setting their lines at night, a recommended technique to avoid accidentally killing albatrosses.
- Mapping fishing vessel behavior involved training new models to recognize when a long-line ship is setting its line.
- This new application broadens the range of GFW’s toolkit to combine machine learning and public data to protect marine wildlife and better manage fisheries.
- Results of the new algorithm formed the basis of a January 2019 regulatory decision by the South Pacific Regional Management Organization.
A snapshot of camera traps reveals user frustrations and hopes
- A team of camera trapping experts surveyed researchers and conservation professionals to identify limitations to their successful use of remote cameras, assess their wish list of technological developments, and predict what next-generation camera trapping will look like.
- Their recently published study revealed that cost, theft, vulnerability of the cameras to environmental conditions, and several ongoing technical issues may be limiting the effectiveness of this popular technology in providing the utility the users seek.
- The survey respondents offered numerous predictions for next-generation camera trapping, including solar and lithium-ion power sources, a wider range of sensors, and software-driven automation.
The good luck black cat, revealed by camera traps
- Camera traps enabled researchers and a professional photographer to document the presence of a rare melanistic (black) leopard, confirming reports of the cat in northern Kenya.
- Five different remote camera stations, positioned near water sources and trails, recorded the young female leopard over three months.
- The case demonstrates the value of remotely placed sensors in capturing both shy, cryptic animals and rare events in nature, such as melanism, which results from genes producing a surplus of pigment in an animal’s skin or hair so that it appears black.
Dam déjà vu: 2 Brazil mining waste disasters in 3 years raise alarms
- Even as Brazil’s newly seated Bolsonaro administration calls for the gutting of environmental licensing rules and for other environmental deregulation, a January collapse of a Vale Mining tailings storage dam in Brumadinho, killing more than 150 people with more than 180 missing and feared dead, has outraged Brazilians.
- The disaster is the second such accident in barely three years. In November 2015, another Vale-affiliated dam collapsed, also in Minas Gerais state, killing 19 and polluting the Doce River for 500 miles all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The two accidents now vie for designation as Brazil’s worst environmental disaster.
- Mongabay’s investigation of the 2015 accident response and the national and state inspection system, while not all encompassing, shows a high degree of long-term failure by government, by mining companies, and inspection consultants to adequately assess tailings dam risk, and to repair structurally deficient dams.
- Three years after the Fundão dam failure, government and mining companies have received poor marks from critics for victim compensation and fixes for socio-environmental harm. On February 7th, Brazil said it aims to ban upstream tailings dams (UTDs), the type that failed both times. No details were released as to how Brazil’s 88 existing UTDs would be dismantled.
Camera traps and customary wisdom help redefine bear conservation
- Camera traps set up around a Canadian artic research camp led to the first published documentation of all three North American bear species in the same locations.
- Although more than 90 percent of the 401 bear visits recorded by the cameras were of polar bears, the presence of grizzlies, which have been seen as threatening polar bears, has caused debate among scientists, conservation managers and local communities.
- The camera data did not document interactions among polar, grizzly and black bears, though the researchers say the spatial overlap of the species suggests potential for interspecies interactions to occur, raising questions about how they might affect bear conservation efforts in the future.
- Some conservation managers, aware that their values align with those of the region’s Indigenous communities, are increasingly marrying traditional wisdom to scientific methods to inform their work.
Study finds bears react, then habituate, to drones
- Small drones increasingly serve as tools to monitor wildlife, detect habitat change, or search for poachers, but their use may be stressing out the animals being studied or other species.
- A research team tested whether black bears would habituate to the repeated presence of drones flying overhead and, if so, whether they would remain habituated to additional flights conducted after a break.
- The bears showed an increased tolerance to drone flights in the short term, which they maintained after a nearly four-month pause.
- With the expanding use of drones in wildlife and habitat studies, the researchers expect their findings to help inform best practices that could reduce animal disturbance in the long run.
As animal tagging goes cutting-edge, ethical questions abound
- An increasing number of animal tracking devices, known as biologgers, also measure environmental variables such as sound, temperature, and ocean salinity.
- Data from biologgers complement information on an animal’s movements and help scientists understand its environment, but can have measurable effects on the animal’s behavior or reproduction.
- As the field of biologging rapidly grows, scientists are trying to develop ethical frameworks for applying devices to wild animals.
A ‘FitBit for squid’ could help track the ocean’s squishier species
- The ITAG, a neutrally buoyant sensor device for soft-bodied invertebrates, is currently in development through joint research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Monterey Bay Aquatic Research Institute.
- The device has shown success in tracking animals such as squid and jellyfish as they respond to environmental changes.
- The casing is 3D printable, and the electronics array will be open-sourced, so scientists may quickly develop tracking devices for other marine invertebrates previously difficult to monitor.
- The current ITAG versions are smaller and more easily retrievable than a 2015 prototype, but researchers are still working to bring the size down and the retrieval rates up.
New space lasers offer best 3D look at global forests yet
- Forest monitoring has increasingly turned to satellites over the past several decades, and 2018 was no exception.
- In the last few months, NASA launched two sensors into space that will play a prominent role in monitoring forest biomass and structure over the next decade: the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) now attached to the International Space Station, and the Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2).
- These two satellites, which in combination provide complete coverage of the planet, are equipped with lidar sensors that record forest structure in 3D, contributing to an ongoing wave of large-scale forest ecosystem measurements.
Can satellite data help monitor sustainable rural development?
- Rural residents in lower-income countries rely on natural resources for part of their livelihood, so a team of researchers explored whether farm-scale environmental characteristics obtained from satellite imagery could help assess and monitor rural poverty.
- Researchers found that integrating satellite data at four spatial scales could predict the poorest households across a landscape in Kenya with 62 percent accuracy, despite differences in how individual households interacted with the surrounding environment.
- The size of buildings within a homestead, the amount of bare agricultural land within and adjacent to the homestead, and the length of the growing season were the best predictors of the wealth of a given household.
- The researchers suggest that the increasing availability of high-resolution satellite data will enable their method to be better able to monitor progress toward meeting the sustainable development goals.
Protecting India’s fishing villages: Q&A with ‘maptivist’ Saravanan
- Fishing communities across the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu are fighting to protect their traditional lands as the sea rises on one side and residential and industrial development encroaches on the others.
- To support these communities, a 35-year-old local fisherman is helping them create maps that document how they use their land.
- By creating their own maps, the communities are taking control of a tool that has always belonged to the powerful.
- Their maps allow them to speak the language of the state so they can resolve disputes and mount legal challenges against industries and government projects encroaching on their land and fishing grounds.
10 ways conservation tech shifted into auto in 2018
- Conservation scientists are increasingly automating their research and monitoring work, to make their analyses faster and more consistent; moreover, machine learning algorithms and neural networks constantly improve as they process additional information.
- Pattern recognition detects species by their appearance or calls; quantifies changes in vegetation from satellite images; tracks movements by fishing ships on the high seas.
- Automating even part of the analysis process, such as eliminating images with no animals, substantially reduces processing time and cost.
- Automated recognition of target objects requires a reference database: the species and objects used to create the algorithm determine the universe of species and objects the system will then be able to identify.
Drone 3D models help assess risk of turtle nesting beaches to sea level rise
- In a recent study, researchers took drone-based images to map the structure of sea turtle nesting beaches in northern Cyprus to determine their susceptibility to flooding from sea level rise.
- Automated drone flights with on-board cameras can record sequences of photos of the surface below, which can be merged in a process called photogrammetry to construct three-dimensional models of the survey area.
- The fast pace of innovation and versatility of drones can improve sea turtle conservation efforts through cheaper, more efficient monitoring.
Illegal mining in the Amazon ‘not comparable to any other period of its history’
- A new study produced jointly by six Amazonian countries calls illegal mining in protected areas and indigenous territories of the Amazon rainforest “epidemic” due to its rapid expansion across the basin and lack of government planning to contain it.
- The report features an interactive map, produced from satellite imagery and a suite of experts and published materials, showing more than 2,300 mining sites and 30 rivers destroyed or contaminated by illegal mining activities.
- The vast majority of mining sites in the report were in Venezuela, followed by Brazil and Ecuador; the Madre de Dios department in southeastern Peru experienced the Amazon’s highest degradation caused by gold mining.
Photos highlight evolving roles of AI, citizen science in species research
- A recent observation by an amateur naturalist of a fiddler crab species hundreds of kilometers north of its known range challenged the complementary strengths of computer vision and human expertise in mapping species distributions.
- The naturalist uploaded this record to the iNaturalist species database used by amateurs and experts to document sightings; expert input correctly identified the specimen after the platform’s computer vision algorithms did not acknowledge the species outside its documented range.
- Citizen naturalist observations can be used to document rapid changes in species distributions. They also can improve modeling and mapping work conducted by researchers and play an increasing prominent role in building environmental databases.
COP24: Summit a step forward, but fails to address climate urgency
- COP24 ran into overtime over the weekend as delegates rushed to approve the Paris rulebook to set up a detailed mechanism for accomplishing and gauging the carbon reduction pledges made by the world’s nations in Paris at the end of 2015.
- But considering the urgency of action needed – with just 12 years left to act decisively to significantly cut emissions, according to an October IPCC science report – the COP24 summit proved to be less successful than many participants had hoped.
- On the negative side: the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia tried to undermine the gravity of the IPCC science report. Brazil successfully scuttled plans for an international carbon market. And COP24 failed to address the bioenergy carbon counting loophole, which incentivizes the harvesting and burning of trees to make energy by calling the process carbon neutral.
- On the positive side, “1,000 tiny steps” were made, including an improved transparency framework for reporting emissions; regular assessments called Global Stocktake to gauge emissions-reduction effectiveness at national levels starting in 2023; and an agreement to set new finance goals in 2020 to help vulnerable nations adapt to a warming world.
Hobby-grade drones can monitor marine animals beneath the surface
- Researchers in The Bahamas have been testing just how good drone videos can be for estimating the abundance and distribution of large marine animals found just beneath the ocean’s surface.
- They flew aerial surveys using commercial-grade drones along six tidal creeks facing high and low human impact, to count sharks, rays, and sea turtles — groups that are both threatened and difficult to monitor. The findings from multiple sites suggest that shoreline development negatively affects the abundance and distribution of various marine species.
- The study also showed that using lower-cost consumer drones equipped with video cameras could help researchers effectively and non-invasively estimate abundance of these marine megafauna in shallow waters and compare data across sites.
COP24: Will they stay or will they go? Brazil’s threat to leave Paris
- In October, Brazil elected far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. During the campaign, he threatened to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, implement extreme environmental deregulation policies, and introduce mining into Amazon indigenous reserves, while also using incendiary language which may be inciting violence in remote rural areas.
- Just days before his election, Bolsonaro contradicted his past utterances, saying he won’t withdraw from the Paris accord. At COP24, the Brazilian delegation has fielded questions from concerned attendees, but it appears that no one there knows with certainty what the volatile leader will do once in office. He begins his presidency on the first of the year.
- Even if Bolsonaro doesn’t pull out of Paris, his plans to develop the Amazon, removing most regulatory impediments to mining and agribusiness, could have huge ramifications for the global climate. The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, stores massive amounts of carbon. Deforestation rates are already going up there, and likely to grow under Bolsonaro.
- Some in Brazil hope that environmental and economic realities will prevent Bolsonaro from fully implementing his plans. Escalating deforestation is already reducing Amazon rainfall, putting aquifers and agribusiness at risk. Agricultural producers also fear global consumer perceptions of Brazil as being anti-environmental could lead to a backlash and boycotts.
Satellite trackers help fight vultures’ extinction in southern Africa
- Vultures in southern Africa are being killed, mainly by eating carcasses poisoned by farmers, and in collisions with power lines and wind turbines.
- Concerned about population declines, the Maloti-Drakensberg Vulture Project began tracking vulture movements with small GPS transmitters, only to find them dying at a rapid rate.
- The three-dimensional tracking data showing the overlap between vulture breeding and roosting areas resulted in cancellation of a pair of proposed wind farms in Lesotho and a call for more ecologically informed siting of needed renewable energy infrastructure.
COP24: Nations complicit in ignoring bioenergy climate bomb, experts say
- Twenty years ago science told policymakers that bioenergy – the burning of woody biomass – was a sustainable form of energy that was carbon neutral. The current United Nations carbon accounting system follows that guidance. However, new science has found the hypothesis to be wrong: bioenergy has been found to add significantly to carbon emissions.
- However, national delegations at the UN climate summit in Poland, COP24, as they wordsmith the Paris Rulebook, are stonewalling on the matter, doing nothing to close the bioenergy carbon accounting loophole. But nature can’t be fooled, which means that the undercounting of emissions could push the world past a climate catastrophe tipping point.
- Still, with the problem unaddressed, developed nations in the European Union and elsewhere continue burning woody biomass as energy, with the U.S., Canada and other nations happy to profit from the accounting error. Tropical nations like Brazil and Peru are eager to jump on the bioenergy bandwagon, a potential disaster for rainforests and biodiversity.
- Meanwhile, NGOs and scientists at COP24 have sought earnestly to alert the media and COP delegations to the bioenergy climate bomb and its looming risks, even going so far as to write language closing the loophole that could be inserted into the Paris Rulebook now being negotiated, but to no avail.
A monitoring network in the Amazon captures a flood of data
- Cameras and microphones are capturing images and sounds of the world’s largest rainforest to monitor the Amazon’s species and environmental dynamics in an unprecedented way.
- The Providence Project’s series of networked sensors is aimed at complementing remote-sensing data on forest cover change by revealing ecological interactions beneath the forest canopy.
- Capable of continuously recording, processing and transmitting information to a database in real time, this high-tech experiment involves research institutions from three countries and the skills of biologists, engineers, computer scientists and other experts.
- The monitoring system will connect to a website to disseminate the forest biodiversity data interactively, which the researchers hope will contribute to more effective biodiversity conservation strategies.
Peru’s Brazil nut harvesters learn to monitor forests with drones
- Brazil nut and ecotourism concessions in the Amazon maintain intact rainforest, but deforestation by illegal loggers, miners, and agriculturalists threaten the integrity of these lands and the Brazil nut industry.
- The Peruvian NGO Conservación Amazónica – ACCA is training concessionaires and forestry officials in southeastern Peru to fly drones and monitor the properties they manage using drone-based cameras.
- The resulting high-resolution aerial images enable concessionaires to detect and quantify deforestation within their Brazil nut, ecotourism, and other forest concessions and support their claims of illegal activity to the authorities.
Bits of DNA in ocean water can reveal white sharks swimming nearby
- Environmental DNA in small samples of seawater can show whether white sharks are in an area.
- In a pilot study, researchers found genetic material from white sharks along two southern California beaches where drones and tagging data indicated white sharks were present.
- Refining this technique could minimize dangerous human-shark interactions and improve shark conservation efforts.
For the birds: Innovations enable tracking of even small flying animals
- Advances in satellite communications have revolutionized wildlife telemetry, yet tracking the movements of small animals, especially ones that fly, and marine species, which rarely break the ocean’s surface, has remained a challenge.
- In a November 20th virtual meetup on next-generation wildlife tracking, three speakers introduced developments that have broadened telemetry’s reach to new species and new types of data being collected.
- Recent innovations — including the ICARUS tracking system, hybridization of communications platforms, and miniaturization of sensors — are producing tiny solar-powered tracking tags and tags carrying various environmental sensors that function within private networks flexible enough to use the most efficient of several communications technologies available at a given site.
Virtual meetup highlights networked sensor technology for parks
- To encourage communication between the conservation community and technology developers, the WILDLABS platform began a series of virtual meetups earlier this month.
- Speakers in the first meetup represented three groups developing and deploying networked sensors for improving wildlife security and reducing human-wildlife conflict.
- The three tech developers described lessons they’ve learned on meeting the needs of rangers and reserve managers, using drones to fight poaching, and adapting technology to function in remote areas under difficult conditions.
Information-based solutions for forest conservation projects
- Many conservationists and foresters continue to struggle with aspects of forest management, whether it’s translating data into actionable information or communicating the results of their work.
- In 2011 Alexander Watson, Stefan Haas, and Patrick Ribeiro founded OpenForests, which provides forest managers with a set of tools to improve data collection, processing, and analysis.
- OpenForests CEO Watson spoke with Mongabay.com ahead of his appearance at the Global Landscape Forum in Bonn, Germany where he is presenting Sunday, 2 December 2018 from 09:00-10:30.
In pursuit of the rare bird that vanishes for half the year
- Until recently, the habits and habitats of the Bengal florican remained a mystery: males were easily seen in their seasonally flooded grassland habitat during the breeding season but effectively disappeared for half the year.
- Researchers in India and Nepal combined field surveys, satellite telemetry and remote sensing to model the distribution and assess the critically endangered bird’s movements, survival and home ranges.
- After years of not knowing the birds’ non-breeding whereabouts, the study found that Bengal floricans leave their protected, seasonally flooded breeding areas in favor of unprotected low-intensity agricultural fields and other upland grasslands during their non-breeding season.
Filling in the gaps: Managing endangered species on the high seas
- Information about how marine animals move through the oceans has become vitally important as efforts progress to create a global plan for securing sustainable fish stocks in the high seas. Researchers are integrating new technologies and applying new approaches to data sets to find answers.
- A recent examination of the long-term Tagging of Pelagic Predators (TOPP) data set has mapped the travel patterns of marine predators — certain whale, turtle, tuna, shark, and seabird species — through their life cycles.
- The study showed that many of these predators spend over half their time on the high seas, supporting the need for global strategies to protect and monitor the high seas. Vessel identification systems paired with several emerging satellite technologies can help.
Camera-wielding robot records effects of pesticide on bees’ behavior
- Bee populations are on the decline, and studies have linked this to the use of pesticides containing neonicotinoid compounds, which can impact insect behavior.
- Researchers built a robotic platform that allowed them to observe the impacts of neonicotinoid compounds on bumblebee behavior inside bee colonies over a 12-day period.
- The robotic observation platform held computer-programmed movable cameras that could monitor up to 12 colonies at a time, which included foraging and nesting chambers with simulated “daytime” and “nighttime” conditions.
- The team found that bumblebees exposed to environmentally realistic amounts of neonicotinoid compounds reduced their nursing and caretaking activities at night and were less able to regulate the colony’s temperature, among other behavioral changes that may impact their population.
Panama, Namibia plan to reveal fishing fleet data via online map
- Panama and Namibia have planned to publicly share information on their fishing fleet in their waters via the open-access mapping tool by Global Fishing Watch (GFW).
- Both nations say such a move would be crucial in improving transparency in fisheries management and protecting their oceans.
- GFW’s mapping platform provides both general data for the public and more detailed information seen only by authorities.
- The tool helps identify if a boat is fishing during the closed season of a particular species; if it enters an unauthorized area; or if it sails into a protected area.
Speed trap: Cameras help defuse human-cheetah conflict in Botswana
- Increases in human-wildlife conflict could undermine Botswana’s conservation efforts, with farmers in some areas shooting carnivores preventatively to protect their livestock.
- Camera traps have helped researchers in Botswanan farmland to monitor cheetahs and other elusive or low-density predators without habituating them to human presence, a key feature in areas where farmers believe they will kill livestock.
- Communicating with local farmers and sharing camera-trap data on cheetahs’ territorial behavior and long-distance travel can help show farmers there may be far fewer individuals than they realize — “the cheetah seen today on one farm may be the same one seen [earlier] several farms away.”
Satellite technology unites Kenyans against bush fires
- The Eastern and Southern Africa Fire Information System (ESAFIS), an online application developed in Kenya, uses MODIS satellite information to detect bush fires in eastern Africa.
- The freely available app maps and categorizes bush fires in near-real time and shows details of each fire , including the time it was detected, its location with respect to towns and protected areas, and its relative intensity.
- By providing an early fire warning system, the system helps forest management authorities respond to fires in their early stages and prioritize limited resources to fire hotspots.
How porpoise sounds helped researchers test acoustic devices
- A team of scientists used playbacks of recorded and artificial porpoise clicks to develop an adaptable method to assess the area in which acoustic monitoring devices can reliably detect these sounds
- Researchers need to know how far away they can expect acoustic data loggers to capture the sounds of target animals to estimate the density of those animals from the recordings.
- The cetacean data loggers could reliably detect the click signals up to nearly 200 meters (656 feet), which translated to a circular sampling area of 11 hectares (27 acres) per device.
- The data logger algorithms could correctly classify the clicks as porpoise sounds only up to 72 meters (236 feet), representing a reliable sampling areas of just 1.6 hectares (4 acres) that could be used to estimate the density of a specific species, an issue affecting researchers working with more than one echolocating species.
Stay or go? Understanding a partial seasonal elephant migration
- Elephants in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park wearing GPS tracking tags shared a general dry-season home range but followed three different wet-season migration strategies: residency, short-distance migration, and long-distance migration.
- Despite similar dry-season conditions that kept all the tagged elephants near provisioned waterholes, the migrating elephants began their seasonal movements at the onset of the first rains.
- Scientists urge collaboration among stakeholders and countries to maintain the long-distance, cross-border migrations some animals need to survive.
Real-time plantation map aims to throttle deforestation in Papua
- The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) plans to roll out an interactive map showing the spread of plantations and roads in Indonesia’s Papua region.
- The region is home to some of the last expanses of pristine tropical forest left in the world, but now faces an influx of plantation companies that have already deforested much of Sumatra and Borneo.
- The Papua Atlas is designed to monitor the spread of plantations and road networks in the region, and builds on CIFOR’s earlier Borneo Atlas.
- Crucially this time, the developers are pitching the Papua Atlas to local officials to help inform their policymaking and planning for the region to minimize adverse impacts on the environment and indigenous communities.
Decoding the language of bats key to their conservation
- Uruguayan scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence algorithm and reference library of bat ultrasound pulses to enable the use of acoustic monitoring of this understudied regional fauna.
- Bats in the Southern Cone are threatened by wind turbines, but their species and sonar emissions differ from other areas, requiring the scientists to build their own acoustic library and predictive algorithms.
- The scientists are collaborating with wind farm companies and international academics to help expand the reference library and improve the algorithm’s accuracy and speed.
Nepali scientists deploy drones to count endangered crocodiles
- Researchers in Nepal used drone images to survey critically endangered gharial crocodiles along the banks of the Babai River, comparing their results to those of multi-team ground surveys.
- Analysis of the drone images produced counts of gharials and mugger crocodiles similar to those of ground survey teams, in less time and at a lower cost.
- The researchers stressed the importance of conducting aerial surveys when environmental conditions are most conducive, such as during the winter months when water clarity in the Babai River enables counts of gharials just under the water’s surface.
Managing the data deluge: Twitter as a tool for ecological research
- Access to constant streams of observational data from 60 or 70 million Twitter users is a potential trove for scientists, but extracting the target data is a challenge.
- A big advantage of social media data mining is the ability to turn data into usable information on a short timetable. The question is, how does quick, retrospective data compare to data from painstakingly prepared collection processes?
- A recent study compared the results from three published citizen science studies to data sets mined retrospectively from Twitter for the same time periods. It confirmed that mining Twitter could yield reliable baseline data (when, where). As for testing causal relationships or hypotheses involving dependent variables, the jury is still out.
- Twitter shows promise for ecological study, particularly studies around seasonal phenomena such as the annual emergence of flying ants. But filtering out the noise of random human observation is a still-evolving science.
Tiny tags and a broad research network help track small animal movements
- Despite great advances in radio-telemetry technology, tracking small animals still presents challenges due to the weight of tracking equipment.
- The Motus Wildlife Tracking System uses nano-tags as light as 0.2 grams to track even small birds and insects.
- Based on a collaborative deployment of automated telemetry receivers, Motus can track animals over a broad geographical region to help answer fundamental questions about animal movements, leading to insights that can help protect migratory species as they traverse the landscape.
Video analysis shows baby birds avoid predators while building strength
- By monitoring grassland bird nests with small video cameras, researchers are learning why and when chicks first venture into the outside world.
- A recent study using video footage showed that nestlings of different species left their nests at different times of the day and over varying lengths of time, from less than one hour to three days for nests with multiple chicks.
- Smaller and more affordable video equipment is allowing scientists to study events, such as bird nest predation and fledging, that happen quickly, generally when humans are absent.
Tracking elephant movements reveals transboundary wildlife corridors
- Data from satellite tracking tags on 120 elephants in southern Africa have identified a suite of wildlife movement corridors across five southern African countries, suggesting the importance of cross-border coordination.
- Wide-ranging movements of elephants include dispersal from northern Botswana north into Angola and south toward the Kalahari Desert.
- Research findings have suggested that open and unimpeded movement corridors can help reduce conflict with human residents while blocked corridors can push elephants and other wildlife into new developments or villages, resulting in increased conflict.
DNA database helps Nepal’s officials monitor tigers, punish poachers
- Nepal’s Centre for Molecular Dynamics has developed a DNA reference database containing genetic and geographic information on 120 of the country’s estimated 200 wild tigers.
- Law enforcement officials used the database to identify the species, sex, and estimated geographic origin of confiscated animal parts suspected to be tigers, pinpointing most of them to individual national parks.
- Such databases have the potential to support not only forensics, but also disease research and monitoring population dynamics, particularly if countries can share genetic data.
Monitoring the ambitious land restoration commitments in Africa
- Announcements by Burkina Faso and Tanzania at the GLF Africa Conference, which took place in Nairobi, Kenya this week, brings restoration commitments under AFR100 to a total of 96.4 million hectares by 27 African countries.
- Making pledges is one thing, however, while monitoring and tracking progress in actually achieving these restoration goals is another. Attendees of the GLF Africa Conference were keenly aware of this challenge, and a variety of tools for monitoring and tracking restoration activities was a topic of much discussion.
- Restoration requires more than the planting of trees, as Charles Karangwa, an IUCN Regional Forest Landscape Restoration Coordinator, noted at the conference: “Countries must enact polices, allocate budget to restoration implementation, track and learn from their progress.”
The Arctic’s oldest, thickest ice is breaking up
- Strong southerly winds pushed sea ice away from Greenland’s north coast twice this year — a possible first.
- We’re unlikely to see a new record sea ice extent minimum in the Arctic Ocean come September 2018. Sea ice extent in the Arctic is currently clocking in at 5.396 million square kilometers (about 2.1 million square miles). That’s the good news.
- But the melt-out above Greenland has alarming implications for the future. If even the thickest, oldest ice is now susceptible to increased warming and changes in weather, what hope is there for the rest of the Arctic?
Researchers weed out a way to identify plants using environmental DNA
- Scientists have developed genetic markers to help identify plant species using environmental DNA (eDNA), the traces of biological material (pollen, spores, skin, scales, etc.) that contains an organism’s unique genetic material. Unlike animal DNA, no universal plant DNA markers exist that can be applied across many plant species and still effectively identify specimens to the species level.
- Researchers focused on one diverse aquatic plant group, pondweeds, which function as effective indicators of water conditions and quality, to make their markers as effective as possible in identifying species from water samples.
- The team detected five of the pondweed species in samples from a research reserve in Ontario, three of which were new to the reserve, demonstrating that eDNA analysis can detect plant species in water samples, including those not known from earlier studies to be present.
Tracking tools identify regional hubs of whale shark activity
- Researchers tracked 17 juvenile whale sharks tagged at three sites in the Philippines to understand how their movements related to food sources and fishing grounds in Southeast Asia.
- They found that juvenile sharks moved quickly and widely through the Bohol and Sulu seas but remained near their feeding sites within Philippine waters.
- In combination with other studies, these findings suggest that locally focused whale shark conservation efforts are critical and must consider the movements juvenile whale sharks make within zones of several hundred square kilometers.
Automating drone-based wildlife surveys saves time and money, study finds
- Reserve managers have begun to survey wildlife in savanna ecosystems by analyzing thousands of images captured using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones), a time-consuming process.
- A research team has developed machine learning models that analyze such aerial images and automatically identify those images most likely to contain animals, which, according to the authors, is usually a small fraction of the total number of images taken during a UAV survey effort.
- The new algorithms reduced the number of images that needed human verification to less than one-third of that using earlier models, and they highlight the patterns in those images that are most likely to be animals, making the technique useful for image-based surveys of large landscapes with animals in relatively few images.
Combining aerial imagery and field data estimates timber harvest and carbon emissions
- Researchers used images from LiDAR, a remote sensing technique that produces 3-D depictions of forest structure, to map logging areas—including roads, skid trails, gaps under the canopy, and decks used to store timber—for four timber concessions in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.
- Pairing the LiDAR data with statistics on the number of trees felled and damaged, the researchers established equations relating the logging area data to both the volume of timber harvested and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.
- The equations explained up to 87 percent of the variation in the volume of timber extracted.
- Using this method, governments, NGOs, and private organizations can verify timber harvests, formulate future management plans, and estimate harvest volumes and greenhouse gas emissions in other tropical forests, including areas of illegal logging.
Videos: spectacled bear’s home in the dry forests of Peru revealed
- Laura, an Andean spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), is the first bear to wear a GPS collar in Peru’s Batán Grande Archaeological Complex, an ecosystem offers greater visibility than cloud forests, where the bears typically live.
- Laura and about 50 other bears have been monitored for ten years by the Spectacled Bear Conservation Peru (SBC) after they were discovered in the unique Peruvian dry forest ecosystem.
- Over an area of 15,000 hectares (over 37,000 acres), the SBC program uses camera traps, GPS collars and direct field observation to study the bears.
Southeast Asian deforestation more extensive than thought, study finds
- Researchers analyzed a suite of satellite imagery products and found much greater deforestation than expected since 2000 in the highlands of Southeast Asia.
- Much of the 82,000 square kilometers (31,700 square miles) they estimate to have been developed into croplands in the region’s highlands reflects previously undocumented conversion of forest, including primary and protected forests, to agriculture.
- Through a sample-based verification process, the authors found that 93 percent of the pixels from areas allocated to areas of net forest loss by the authors’ model were confirmed as net forest loss, and 99 percent of the pixels delineated as other areas were accurately labelled as non-net forest loss.
- The findings contrast with previous assumptions about land-cover trends currently used in projections of global climate change and future environmental conditions in Southeast Asia.
Online mapping tool tracks land-use changes down to the farm
- The online mapping platform MapHubs stores maps and spatial data and makes them available to user groups for viewing, analyzing, and sharing with stakeholders.
- Users purchase a portal on the platform that allows the group to combine various public and private data sets in one secure place, produce maps, customize how the portal presents information, and receive support when needed.
- Groups have used the platform to identify deforestation from oil palm and cacao plantations and generate products such as time-lapse videos to show how regional deforestation can shift and expand.
Cool birds don’t sing: Study automates acoustic monitoring of songbird migration
- Researchers have developed machine learning techniques to identify bird song from thousands of hours of field recordings, using the information to uncover variations in migratory songbirds’ arrival to their Arctic breeding grounds.
- They deployed automated listening devices during spring over five years, analyzed vocal activity to estimate when birds arrived at their breeding sites, and assessed relationships between vocal activity and environmental conditions.
- They found that the acoustically derived estimates of the birds’ arrival dates were similar to those determined using standard field surveys.
- Temperature and presence of snow affected the birds’ calling patterns, suggesting that collecting corresponding weather data could help avoid bias in using acoustic monitoring to assess population dynamics.
2018 Arctic sea ice melt season just got a big headstart
- This Spring, Arctic sea ice extent nearly achieved a new record low for May, but instead came in at second place at 12.2 million square kilometers (4.7 million square miles). That’s 310,000 square kilometers (120,000 square miles) greater than the all time May record set in 2016.
- While scientists and the media have focused in the past mostly on the September sea ice extent minimum, four years in a row of record winter Arctic heatwaves, along with a better understanding of ice melt mechanisms, has resulted in researchers putting much more attention on Spring events as the annual melt season gets underway.
- It is now understood that shrinking Arctic sea ice extent is having a significant influence on the global climate system, but extent isn’t all researchers are watching. They are becoming more and more concerned about the quality of the sea ice at the start of each melt season – thickness, as well as the disappearance of large amounts of multiyear ice.
- Thinner, more fractured ice, and more numerous Spring melt ponds make the Arctic ice more vulnerable to summer heatwaves and a warmer Arctic Ocean. As with May, June 2018 has so far seen rapid ice melt, with extent lagging only slightly behind the record set in June 2016. That doesn’t bode well for the September sea ice extent minimum.
Species recognition shifts into auto with neural networks
- Scientists have shown that a cutting-edge type of artificial intelligence can automatically count, identify, and describe the behaviors of 48 animal species in camera trap images taken in the Serengeti ecosystem.
- The team used a dataset of 3.2 million wildlife images to train and test deep convolutional neural networks to recognize not only individual animals but also what the animals are doing in each image.
- The models performed as well as human volunteers in identifying, counting, and describing the behavior of animals in nearly all the Serengeti camera trap images and also identified those images that required human review.
- The widespread use of motion-sensor camera traps for wildlife research and conservation, coupled with the inefficiency of manual image processing, means successful automation of some or all of the image analysis process is likely to save researchers time and money, as well as catalyze new uses of remote camera photos.
Hunting, fishing causing dramatic decline in Amazon river dolphins
- Both species of Amazon river dolphin appear to be in deep decline, according to a recent study. Boto (Inia geoffrensis) populations fell by 94 percent and Tucuxi (Sotalia fluviatilis) numbers fell by 97 percent in the Mamirauá Reserve in Amazonas state, Brazil between 1994 and 2017, according to researchers.
- Difficult to detect in the Amazon’s murky waters, both species are listed as “Data Deficient” by the IUCN. But researchers maintain that if region-wide surveys were conducted both species would end up being listed as Critically Endangered.
- The team noticed scars from harpoon and machete injuries on the dolphins they caught. Interviews with fishermen confirmed the team’s suspicions: dolphins were being hunted for use as bait. The mammals also get entangled in nets and other fishing gear, are hunted as food, eliminated as pests, and suffer mercury poisoning.
- Researchers believe the passage and enforcement of new conservation laws could save Amazon river dolphins, and halt their plunge toward extinction. But a lack of political will, drastic draconian cuts to the Brazilian environmental ministry budget, and continued illegal dolphin hunting and fishing make action unlikely for now.
UN forest accounting loophole allows CO2 underreporting by EU, UK, US
- Emissions accounting helps determine whether or not nations are on target to achieve their voluntary Paris Agreement reduction goals. Ideally, the global community’s CO2 pledges, adjusted downward over time, would, taken together, help keep the world from heating up by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 from a 1900 baseline.
- But scientists are raising the alarm that this goal may already be beyond reach. One reason: a carbon accounting loophole within UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines accepting the burning of wood pellets (biomass) as a carbon neutral replacement for coal — with wood now used in many European Union and United Kingdom power plants.
- Scientists warn, however, that their research shows that replacing coal with wood pellets in power plants is not carbon neutral. That’s partly because burning wood, which is celebrated by governments as a renewable and sustainable energy resource, is less efficient than coal burning, so it actually produces more CO2 emissions than coal.
- Also, while wood burning and tree replanting over hundreds of years will end up carbon neutral, that doesn’t help right now. Over a short timeframe, at a historical moment when we require aggressive greenhouse gas reductions, wood burning is adding to global emissions. Analysts say that this loophole needs to be closed, and soon, to avoid further climate chaos.
One-stop shop for digital global maps launched
- A new online platform called Resource Watch makes over 200 geographically referenced global-scale data sets available for viewing and analysis.
- You can view and overlay spatial data layers on your own or explore analyses produced by the platform’s research staff.
- The developers hope that assembling a broad collection of environmental, economic, infrastructure, and social data in a single platform will promote understanding of the connections between human activities and natural systems and encourage more sustainable decision-making.
eDNA may offer an early warning signal for deadly frog pathogen
- Scientists sampling water for the environmental DNA of fish had the unique opportunity to test the potential of using eDNA to detect the presence of a fungus deadly to frogs while the animals are still healthy.
- The Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd, or chytrid) fungus has decimated frog populations across the world and is very difficult to detect until the frogs of a newly infected population start to die.
- The research suggests that eDNA could help managers predict which lakes and other water bodies harbor the chytrid fungus and take action to protect surviving amphibian populations.
From galaxies far, far away to endangered species just over the hill
- Astrophysicists and conservation ecologists have teamed up to apply the heat-detection software and machine-learning algorithms used to find stars to automatically identify people and different animal species.
- The system detects warm, living objects from drone-derived thermal video footage and uses a reference database to identify the various objects efficiently and reliably.
- The research team is refining the system to overcome challenges of variable environmental conditions, as well as hot rocks and other “thermally bright” but uninteresting objects, while building a reference database of multiple target species.
How to build a Guardian: students learn about making technology work in the field
- Students in several science and tech schools in California are learning to design and build Guardians, acoustic monitoring devices to help protect rainforests from illegal logging while keeping a record of the sounds made by forest wildlife.
- Led by the non-profit Rainforest Connection, the students are constructing the Guardians from old, recycled smartphones armed with solar power and Google’s open source machine learning framework, TensorFlow, which transforms them into field-tough listening tools.
- The program also addresses the challenges of designing and developing technology for humid, rugged, remote field conditions typical of indigenous reserves and protected areas.
Radar returns to remote sensing through free, near-real-time global imagery
- The European Space Agency’s launch of the Sentinel-1 satellite has made 20-meter resolution radar imagery of the whole planet freely available.
- The “all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface” complements standard optical satellite imagery in detecting forest loss, even under heavy cloud cover.
- The Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) demonstrates the benefits of analyzing free radar imagery to accurately quantify wet season loss of rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon.
Small hydropower a big global issue overlooked by science and policy
- Brazil recently announced an end to its mega-dam construction policy, a strategy other nations may embrace as understanding of the massive environmental and social impacts of big dams grows.
- However, a trend long neglected by scientists and policymakers ¬ the rapid growth of small dams – has been spotlighted in a new study.
- Nearly 83,000 small dams in 150 nations (with 11 small dams for each large dam), exist globally, while that number could triple if all capacity worldwide is used. More than 10,000 new small dams are already in the planning stages. But small dam impacts have been little studied by scientists, and little regulated by governments.
- Environmentalists say that, with the rapid construction of new small dams, it is urgent for researchers to assess the impacts of different types of small dams, as well as looking at the cumulative impacts of many small dams placed on a single river, or on main stems and tributaries within watersheds.
In blood-sucking leeches, scientists find a genetic snapshot of local wildlife
- Scientists have identified mammals present at sites in Asia by examining the DNA in the blood sucked by leeches.
- They found that the nearly 750 Haemadipsa (blood-sucking) leeches stored the DNA of a diversity of other species, from mice to monkeys and birds, not to mention humans and domestic animals.
- Collecting terrestrial leeches is fast, cheap, and easy (they come to you!), and they feed on a broad spectrum of mammals, enabling them to serve as cost-effective tools for determining the presence of even scarce and elusive species.
Andes dams twice as numerous as thought are fragmenting the Amazon
- A new study identified 142 dams currently in operation or under construction in the Andes headwaters of the Amazon, twice the number previously estimated. An additional 160 are in the planning stages.
- If proposed Andes dams go ahead, sediment transport to the Amazon floodplains could cease, blocking freshwater fish migratory routes, disrupting flow and flood regimes, and threatening food security for downstream communities, impacting up to 30 million people.
- Most dams to date are on the tributary networks of Andean river main stems. But new dams are planned for five out of eight major Andean Amazon main stems, bringing connectivity reductions on the Marañón, Ucayali and Beni rivers of more than 50 percent; and on the Madre de Dios and Mamoré rivers of over 35 percent.
- Researchers conclude that proposed dams should be required to complete cumulative effects assessments at a basin-wide scale, and account for synergistic impacts of existing dams, utilizing the UN Watercourses Convention as a legal basis for international cooperation for sustainable water management between Amazon nations.
Norsk Hydro accused of Amazon toxic spill, admits ‘clandestine pipeline’
- Norsk Hydro’s Alunorte aluminum refining facility in Barcarena municipality, Pará state, has been accused by Brazilian authorities of contaminating the local waters of several communities with toxic waste that overflowed earlier this month from a holding basin.
- The firm denied the allegation, but has agreed to provide water to local residents, and is investigating.
- The government also accused the company of having a “clandestine pipeline to discharge untreated effluent,” an allegation that the Norwegian state firm has since admitted to being true.
- Officials have yet to determine the full cause, scope or consequence of the spill, while locals complain that this isn’t the first time. According to IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, Norsk Hydro has not paid fines set at R $17 million to date (US $5.27 million), after a toxic overflow in 2009 put the local Barcarena population at risk.
Detecting disasters on community lands in the Amazon: film highlights indigenous struggle
- For decades, indigenous communities across the western Amazon have protested the contamination of their water, soil and other natural resources by oil companies.
- A short film, “Detecting Disasters,” explores the use by the Kukama Kukamiria and other indigenous groups of small drones to strengthen their case to officials and reduce future damage to their health and that of their forest resources.
- The successful, consistent use of drones and other new technologies by remote communities requires overcoming several basic challenges, including adequate electricity, training time, and availability of parts to make repairs.
Drought-driven wildfires on rise in Amazon basin, upping CO2 release
- Despite a 76 percent decline in deforestation rates between 2003 and 2015, the incidence of forest fires is increasing in Brazil, with new research linking the rise in fires not only to deforestation, but also to severe droughts.
- El Niño, combined with other oceanic and atmospheric cycles, produced an unusually severe drought in 2015, a year that saw a 36 percent increase in Amazon basin forest fires, which also raised carbon emissions.
- Severe droughts are expected to become more common in the Brazilian Amazon as natural oceanic cycles are made more extreme by human-induced climate change.
- In this new climate paradigm, limiting deforestation alone will not be sufficient to reduce fires and curb carbon emissions, scientists say. The maintenance of healthy, intact, unfragmented forests is vital to providing resilience against further increases in Amazon fires.
The cutting-edge technologies allowing us to monitor ecosystems like never before
- On today’s episode, we discuss the cutting-edge remote sensing technologies used to monitor ecosystems like rainforests and coral reefs. We also listen to a few ecoacoustic recordings that are used to analyze species richness in tropical forests.
- Our first guest today is Greg Asner, who leads the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) at Stanford University’s Carnegie Institution for Science. Asner invented a technique he calls “airborne laser-guided imaging spectroscopy” that utilizes imaging spectrometers mounted on the Carnegie Airborne Observatory airplane to produce highly detailed data on large and complex ecosystems like tropical forests.
- Our second guest is Mitch Aide, the principal investigator at the University of Puerto Rico’s Tropical Community Ecology Lab. In this Field Notes segment, Aide will play us a few of the audio recordings he’s uploaded to Arbimon as part of his recent research and will explain how these recordings are used to examine species richness in tropical forests.
Data fusion opens new horizons for remote imaging of landscapes
- Scientists use remotely sensed data from satellites to map and analyze habitat extent, vegetation health, land use change, and plant species distributions at various scales.
- Open-source data sets, analysis tools, and powerful computers now allow scientists to combine different sources of satellite-based data.
- A new paper details how combining multispectral and radar data enables more refined analyses over broader scales than either can alone.
Crowdsourcing the fight against poaching, with the help of remote cameras
- A U.S. non-profit and a cadre of volunteers have teamed up with reserves in South Africa and Indonesia to combat wildlife poaching through a series of connected camera traps.
- The group’s monitoring system, wpsWatch, can transmit visual, infrared, and thermal camera images as well as data from radar, motion detectors, and other field devices.
- The volunteers monitor image feeds while rangers sleep and have become an effective part of the team, which has detected roughly 180 intrusions into the reserves, including rhino and bushmeat poachers.
Record Amazon fires, intensified by forest degradation, burn indigenous lands
- As of September 2017, Brazil’s Pará state in the Amazon had seen a 229 percent increase in fires over 2016; in a single week in December the state saw 26,000 fire alerts. By year’s end, the Brazilian Amazon was on track for an all-time record fire season.
- But 2017 was not a record drought year, so experts have sought other causes. Analysts say most of the wildfires were human-caused, set by people seeking to convert forests to crop or grazing lands. Forest degradation by mining companies, logging and agribusiness added to the problem.
- Huge cuts made by the Temer administration in the budgets of Brazilian regulatory and enforcement agencies, such as FUNAI, the nation’s indigenous protection agency, and IBAMA, its environmental agency, which fights fires, added to the problem in 2017.
- The dramatic rise in wildfires has put indigenous communities and their territories at risk. For example, an area covering 24,000 hectares (59,305 acres), lost tree cover within the Kayapó Indigenous Territory from October to December, while the nearby Xikrin Indigenous Territory lost roughly 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) over the same period.
Trump threatens NASA climate satellite missions as Congress stalls
- Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget would cut four NASA Earth Observation projects including three climate satellite missions: the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission; Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) pathfinder; and Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3).
- These missions are critical to ongoing climate change research, as well as to weather and air pollution forecasting. Without them, international scientists lose their “eyes in the sky” with potentially disastrous consequences for people not only in the United States, but the world round.
- The U.S. Congress has the final say on whether these satellite programs go forward or not. Their vote on the 2018 budget was delayed from September to December 2017, and now to 19 January, 2018. Whether the vote will occur then, or what the outcome might be, remains in question.
- As a result of Trump’s threatened cuts the international scientific community has been left in great uncertainty. It is currently scrambling to find a way to replace NASA’s planned Earth Observation missions and continue vital climate change, weather and pollution monitoring.
Study: Amazon dams are disrupting ecologically vital flood pulses
- Flood pulses are critical to the way the Amazon, its tributaries and other tropical rivers function – and these seasonal flood pulses are a huge driver of ecological productivity and diversity.
- Floodplain forests depend upon annual flood pulses to bring nutrients and sediment from river channels out into the surrounding terrestrial habitat.
- Reductions to flood pulses, brought by Amazon dams both large and small, could lead to shifts in tree species diversity and composition, with implications for carbon storage and emissions.
- Unreliable flood regimes, as created by dams of all sizes, significantly impact Amazon river systems and species’ life cycles, population dynamics, food sources, and habitats above and below the water line.
‘AudioMoth’ device aims to deliver low-cost, power-efficient monitoring of remote landscapes
- UK-based researchers who have developed a low-power, open-source acoustic monitoring device say it shows promise for monitoring wildlife and illicit incursions by mankind into remote habitats.
- The researchers say that the device, which is about the size of a matchbox, can be made for as little as $43 per unit — a price-point that could be key to ensuring coverage across large landscapes, where numerous monitoring devices are required.
- The AudioMoth can be programmed to monitor wildlife populations by recording the calls of specific target species while at the same time serving as an alert system when the sounds of human exploitation, such as the blast of a shotgun or the roar of a chainsaw, are detected.
10 top conservation tech innovations from 2017
- The increased portability and reduced cost of data collection and synthesis tools have transformed how we research and conserve the natural world.
- Devices from visual and acoustic sensors to DNA sequencers help us better understand the world around us, and they combine with online mapping platforms to help us monitor it.
- New online and mobile apps have democratized data collection, inspiring a brave new world of citizen scientists to learn about the species around them, contribute to conservation and scientific discovery, and feel part of a learning community.
- Here, we present 10 tech trends we covered in 2017, in no particular order, that have helped us better understand nature, monitor its status, and take action to protect it.
Combining computing power and people power to identify key deforestation hotspots
- Technology now allows us to remotely locate and monitor areas of forest loss, creating the challenge of responding to areas with rampant deforestation.
- The Global Forest Watch platform has launched Places to Watch, a feature that highlights key areas of recent deforestation, especially near intact and protected forests.
- An automated process selects deforestation hotspots, which are then filtered and prioritized by experts using satellite imagery and locally-derived reports to select 10 “Places” each month.
- The GFW team aims to provide journalists, activists, and concerned citizens and government, with curated deforestation information to encourage action that prevents further loss in priority areas.
Counting tigers on smartphones
- India’s 2018 national tiger estimation will use an Android-based mobile application to streamline collection of field data on tigers and prey, add photos and GPS coordinates, record poaching and human-wildlife conflict, and reduce error in data entry.
- The M-STrIPES app uploads field data automatically to a remote central server for rapid analysis or stores the data on the user’s mobile phone until internet access is available.
- The app has been tested successfully in a few tiger reserves, made more user friendly, and is now being rolled out on a national scale, but can it help resolve discrepancies in survey results?
Where one predator meets another: tracking sharks and fishing effort
- Fishing boats kill over 100 million sharks each year, many of which are caught unintentionally (bycatch) and may be discarded at sea without being recorded, so data on their mortality are poor.
- Researchers used satellite telemetry and publicly available global fishing locations in Global Fishing Watch to compare movements of 10 blue sharks to fishing activity in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.
- Within a 110-day period, two of the 10 tagged sharks surfaced near three different boats that were likely fishing, based on their movement patterns.
- The research team wants to better understand how fishing fleets can limit fishing in areas when and where sharks and other non-target species gather or migrate each year.
An early warning system for locating forest loss
- The Global Land Analysis & Discovery (GLAD) alert system accessed in Global Forest Watch uses satellite imagery to detect forest loss in areas as small as 30 m x 30 m.
- The system accesses and analyzes Landsat imagery for a subscriber’s area of interest, every week, and sends alerts of tree cover loss via email that enable users to respond to deforestation while it is still in its early stages.
- The alert system is now available for 22 countries and will expand to remaining humid tropical forests in the coming months.
From carbon sink to source: Brazil puts Amazon, Paris goals at risk
- Brazil is committed to cutting carbon emissions by 37 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, to ending illegal deforestation, and restoring 120,000 square kilometers of forest by 2030. Scientists warn these Paris commitments are at risk due to a flood of anti-environmental and anti-indigenous measures forwarded by President Michel Temer.
- “If these initiatives succeed, Temer will go down in history with the ruralistas as the ones who put a stake in the beating heart of the Amazon.” — Thomas Lovejoy, conservation biologist and director of the Center for Biodiversity and Sustainability at George Mason University.
- “The Temer government’s reckless behavior flies in the face of Brazil’s commitments to the Paris Agreement.” — Christian Poirier, program director at Amazon Watch.
- “There was, or maybe there still is, a very slim chance we can avoid a catastrophic desertification of South America. No doubt, there will be horrific damage if the Brazilian government initiatives move forward in the region.” — Antonio Donato Nobre, scientist at INPA, the Institute for Amazonian Research.
As negotiators meet in Bonn, Brazil’s carbon emissions rise
- Brazil pledged in Paris to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 37 percent by 2025 over 2005 levels. But its emissions shot up 8.9 percent in 2016, largely due to deforestation and agriculture. That increase threatens Brazil’s Paris goal.
- Pará, in the heart of the Amazon, was the highest carbon emitter state, with 12.3 percent of the national total (due almost exclusively to deforestation and poorly managed industrial agriculture), followed by Mato Grosso state (9.6 percent of national emissions), which has converted much forest to soy production.
- Experts say that this emissions trend could be reversed through sustainable forestry and more efficient agricultural practices. However, the dominance of the elite ruralist faction in Congress and in the Temer administration is preventing progress toward achieving Brazil’s carbon pledge.
Mining activity causing nearly 10 percent of Amazon deforestation
- Scientists have learned that nearly 10 percent of the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2005 and 2015 was due to mining activities. Previously, it was thought to cause just 1-2 percent, but that is because past assessments primarily looked at deforestation caused by the mines themselves, and didn’t account for all the ancillary infrastructure that accompanies the mines.
- With mining causing such high levels of deforestation — up to 70 kilometers away from mines — and with the Brazilian government under Michel Temer eager to open vast areas of the Amazon to mining, the researchers say that companies and government need to aggressively address the deforestation issue.
- While the new research documented Amazon deforestation due to many ancillary activities, including roads, staff housing and airports, it did not look into the major deforestation brought by
the new hydroelectric dams that often provide energy for mining operations
- To address the high level of deforestation caused by mining in the Amazon, Brazil needs to significantly revise its environmental impact assessment process to include ancillary infrastructure up to 70 kilometers away from mines along with related hydroelectric dam construction.
New resource for planning camera trapping, acoustic monitoring, and LiDAR projects
- WWF-UK has produced a website and series of best-practice guideline documents to help field teams deploy camera trapping, acoustic monitoring, and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR).
- The guidelines address issues ranging from assessing the relevance of each method to a particular project goal and ecosystem, to practical tips for deployment, to the physics behind the functioning of the technology.
- The resource should help readers planning a specific project using one or more of these approaches and include extensive lists of published studies for each method.
Brazilian police nab Amazon timber thieves who faked forest credits
- Federal Police arrested and fined participants in an illegal logging and forest credit fraud scheme operating in Pará, Santa Catarina, Paraná and Mato Grosso states.
- The timber thieves were aided in this crime by gaps in the government’s licensing program and poor control of the timber production chain in Pará and Mato Grosso; lapses which authorities are now moving to correct.
- The timber thieves cut rare ipê trees on the Amazon’s Cachoeira Seca indigenous reserve, then used falsified records and a variety of companies to move the timber to other states and export the wood, used for expensive decking in the U.S., Argentina, Panama, France, Germany, the UK, United Arab Emirates and South Korea.
- Fines for illegal timber harvesting are only R$ 5,000 (US$ 1,587) per hectare; and for failing to submit proper reports, between R$ 1,000 and R$ 100,000 (US$ 317 to US$ 31,700), insignificant amounts that do little to deter a crime that can yield very high profits for perpetrators. These fines have not been increased since 2008.
Amazonian manatee migration at risk from disruption by proposed dams
- Amazonian manatees (Trichechus inunguis) spend the high-water season feeding in flooded forests, but migrate to deeper permanent water bodies to see out the dry season.
- Researchers have found that as the dry season approaches, manatees time their migration out of the floodplain to avoid bottlenecks that would block their route, and doom them.
- But, the scientists warn, those bottlenecks will become far more common, and less predictable, if the hundreds of hydropower dams planned for the Amazon go forward.
- The dams, and the bottleneck problem they create, “generates profound concern for the conservation of manatees,” the scientists write.
Booming legal Amazon wildlife trade documented in new report
- Wildlife trade attention has recently focused on Africa. But a new report spotlights the brisk legal international trade in plants and animals from eight Amazon nations. The report did not look at the illegal trade, whose scope is largely unknown.
- The US$128 million industry exports 14 million animals and plants annually, plus one million kilograms by weight, including caiman and peccary skins for the fashion industry, live turtles and parrots for the pet trade, and arapaima for the food industry.
- The report authors note that such trade, conducted properly, can have benefits for national economies, for livelihoods, and even for wildlife — animals bred in captivity, for example, can provide scientists with vital data for sustaining wild populations.
- The report strongly emphasizes the need for monitoring, regulating and enforcing sustainable harvest levels of wild animals and plants if the legal trade is to continue to thrive, and if Amazonian forests and rivers are not to be emptied of their wildlife.
Amazon deforestation linked to McDonald’s and British retail giants
- British fast food restaurants and grocery chains, including Tesco, Morrisons and McDonald’s, buy their chicken from Cargill, which feeds its poultry with imported soy, much of it apparently coming from the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado — areas rapidly being deforested for new soy plantations.
- A decade ago, Cargill and other global commodities companies agreed to stop buying soy from the Brazilian Amazon and established a Soy Moratorium in the region.
- But a recent study showed that Cargill and other companies simply began sourcing their soy purchases from nearby areas, including the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado, a vast area of savanna, part of which is included in Brazil’s definition of Legal Amazonia.
- That shift has resulted in rapid deforestation in both areas; a Mighty Earth report revealed that U.S. soy distributor Cargill is a major soy buyer there. Efforts to extend the soy moratorium to the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado have long been opposed by Cargill, despite calls to do so by NGOs, scientists and the Brazilian environment minister.
USAID Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge awards Acceleration Prizes for rapid tech developments
- The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge announced three winners of a $100,000 Acceleration Prize for rapid progress in developing a wildlife crime solution system.
- The winning devices were: an artificial sea turtle egg to track illegal movements of eggs and identify transit routes; a genetic reference map of pangolin poaching hotspots; and a camera-ground sensor system to monitor and communicate illegal human activity in remote reserves.
- The poaching, trafficking, and consumption of meat, scales, tusks, skin, fur, feathers, and horns of many hundreds of species has depleted populations worldwide and caused local extinctions.
At 2017 minimum, scientists ask: Is Arctic entering the Thin Ice Age?
- The decline of Arctic ice didn’t set a record this year, with sea ice extent coming in eighth after record-setting 2012. On September 13, at the summer minimum, sea ice covered 4.64 million square kilometers; that’s 1.25 million square kilometers more than 2012.
- However, that fact was overshadowed by another: experts say what matters most in the Arctic is the total volume of ice — a combination of thickness and extent. 2017 saw summer volumes among the lowest ever recorded.
- The Arctic set still another record that concerns scientists: no other 12-month period (September 2016 to August 2017) has had such persistently low sea ice extent.
- The Arctic ice is therefore showing no signs of recovery, scientists say, and its decline is likely continuing to impact the Earth’s weather in unpredictable and destabilizing ways.
Andes dams could threaten food security for millions in Amazon basin
- More than 275 hydroelectric projects are planned for the Amazon basin, the majority of which could be constructed in the Andes whose rivers supply over 90 percent of the basin’s sediments and over half its nutrients.
- A new study projects huge environmental costs for six of these dams, which together will retain 900 million tons of river sediment annually, reducing supplies of phosphorus and nitrogen, and threatening fish populations and soil quality downstream.
- Accumulating sediments upstream of dams are projected to release 10 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, significantly contributing to global warming, and would contaminate waters and the aquatic life they support with mercury.
- The construction of these dams should be reconsidered to preserve food security and the livelihoods of millions of people in the Amazon Basin.
Technologies that boost conservation efforts right now and in the future
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we take a look at the role technology is playing — and might play in the future — in conservation efforts.
- Our first guest is Topher White, the founder of Rainforest Connection, a nonprofit based in San Francisco that has deployed upcycled cell phones in tropical forests around the world to provide real-time monitoring of forests and wildlife.
- Our second guest is Matthew Putman, an applied physicist with a keen interest in conservation. Putman is CEO of Nanotronics, a company headquartered in Brooklyn, NY that makes automated industrial microscopes used by manufacturers of advanced technologies like semiconductors, microchips, hard drives, LEDs, and aerospace hardware.
Temer’s Amazon mining decrees derided by protestors, annulled by judge
- In a seeming win for Canadian and Brazilian mining companies, President Michel Temer on August 23rd abolished a vast Amazonian national reserve — the Renca preserve, covering 4.6 million hectares — and opened the region up to mining.
- The reserve, straddling Pará and Amapá states, contains large preserved areas and indigenous communities. Temer’s original Amazon mining decree was met with widespread condemnation, resulting in a second clarifying decree on August 28th.
- On August 29th, federal judge Ronaldo Spanholo annulled both decrees, citing Brazil’s 1988 constitution, and ruling that the Renca preserve may not be abolished by presidential order but only legislative action. The Brazilian Union´s General Advocate said it will appeal the judge´s decision.
- BBC Brasil reported that Canadian mining companies, who would likely profit from the Renca preserve´s abolishment, were notified that the region was going to be opened up for prospecting last March, five months before the original decree was issued.
Temer pays back ruralists: opens Brazil, Amazon to mining, say critics
- In a victory for transnational and Brazilian mining companies, President Michel Temer this week decreed the opening of a vast national reserve covering 4.6 million hectares in the Amazon to mining. The region contains large conserved areas as well as indigenous communities.
- Late last month, Temer also decreed a new Brazilian mining code. Though the code still needs to be approved by Congress, it shifts responsibility for monitoring environmental standards away from government and to the mining companies — a move that risks major mining accidents.
- It also replaces the National Department of Mineral Production with a new regulatory agency, the National Mining Agency — a bureau that critics say lacks the teeth and personnel to do the job.
- Mining code opponents are also concerned it could weaken protections against mining on indigenous lands. They say that the new mining code and green lighting of mining in the Amazon is pay back for a House of Deputies vote in August to close a criminal investigation of the president for corruption.
Indonesia’s decision to share vessel tracking data ‘ill-advised,’ some say
- In June, Indonesia became the first country to share its Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data, which tracks location and activities of commercial fishing boats, with Global Fishing Watch which uses tools like satellite imagery to monitor environmental issues.
- While the move is praised by conservationists for its potential to deter illegal fishing, some observers argue that publishing the data will backfire on the location of Indonesia’s best fisheries.
- Supporters of the policy refute the claims saying that it will help Indonesian authorities intercept any sign of violations on the country’s oceans, and boost compliance among fishing businesses in sustainable marine and fisheries.
New research provides baseline for evaluating effectiveness of US ban on ivory trade
- The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) announced a “near-total ban” on the commercial trade of elephant ivory last year.
- Now, new research led by wildlife trade monitoring NGO TRAFFIC released last week provides a baseline for the state of the ivory market in the U.S. at the time the ban went into effect — which future monitoring efforts will rely on in order to determine the impacts of the legislative and regulatory changes made by the FWS a year ago.
- Researchers found that a total of 1,589 elephant ivory items, including figurines (780 items), jewelry (417), and household goods (261), were being sold by 227 different vendors in six major American cities from May to July 2016.
- They also also found that some 2,056 elephant ivory items were available on six major online auction sites and marketplaces between June and August 2016.
HydroCalculator: new, free, online tool helps citizens assess dams
- With mega-dams planned globally, especially in the Amazon and Mekong, the Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF), an NGO, has developed a new free tool for evaluating a planned dam’s economic viability, greenhouse gas emissions and more.
- The HydroCalculator estimates the net economic value of a proposed dam, with and without the cost of greenhouse gas emissions factored in, number of years required before a project generates a profit, and years until net emissions become negative.
- The tool has been used by CSF, International Rivers, and a development bank and found to be very useful. Its forecasts have been tested against the economic viability and carbon emissions of existing dams, and found accurate.
- The HydroCalculator is meant for use by communities, researchers and activists who are often closed out of the technical dam planning process. It is available free online.
Long-term thermal imaging video surveillance records how disease affects hibernating bats
- White-nose syndrome alters how and when bats arouse from hibernation, and millions of bats have died since the disease emerged in 2006.
- Researchers adapted widely used thermal imaging video technology to monitor caves of hibernating bats for complete winters to determine the extent of impact of white-nose syndrome without disturbing the animals’ hibernation patterns.
- The researchers’ long-term monitoring found that the bats’ arousal patterns have, in fact, been affected. However, the animals may have found a way to adapt to the disease.
Study links most Amazon deforestation to 128 slaughterhouses
- A new study by the NGO Imazon finds that just 128 slaughterhouses process 93 percent of cattle raised in the Brazilian Amazon. The areas of influence supplying the herds to those plants coincide with where the most Amazon deforestation occurs.
- The total pasture area, or zone of influence, corresponding to the 128 slaughterhouses provided an 88 percent match with the deforested area that occurred in the Amazon between 2010 and 2015.
- Based on a probability map created by the study, a 90 percent match was also found between the 128 slaughterhouse zones of estimated cattle supply and the Amazon areas projected to have a higher risk of new deforestation in future.
- The study adds weight to the idea that the most effective deforestation enforcement strategy is not to regulate the Amazon’s 400,000 ranchers and farmers, but for government to enter into effective deforestation enforcement partnerships with the slaughterhouses.
Low-tech challenges to high-tech forest monitoring: lessons from Ugandan parks
- Remote sensing technology can provide useful intelligence to park managers but must be combined with an understanding of its limitations, as well as the tools and training needed for its use.
- An assessment by park rangers in Uganda of satellite image-based deforestation alerts found that the alert locations at 30 m x 30 m resolution were sufficiently accurate to support reserve management.
- The near real-time alerts of likely deforestation could make forest patrols more efficient and effective, but rangers must still have proper training, incentives, and resources to properly integrate alerts into their regular functions.
Catching the buzz: acoustic monitoring of bees could determine pollination services
- The services of pollinating animals are necessary for the reproduction of over 85 percent of flowering plants, and the majority of these pollinators are bees.
- Characteristics of individual bees, including their body size and tongue length, result in unique buzz signatures and allow for the study of the bee’s productivity.
- To help the productivity of bees’ pollination services, researchers have developed an inexpensive method of measuring each bee’s acoustics that will eventually be available for the public’s use.
Amazon infrastructure EIAs under-assess biodiversity; scientists offer solutions
- In a new paper, scientists assert that environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for major Brazilian Amazon infrastructure projects often fail in their performance of comprehensive biodiversity evaluations, so underestimate ecosystem risk.
- Their proposed solution is the development and use within EIAs of multiple, complementary scientific methods they say would be cost effective, and make more comprehensive biodiversity assessments possible.
- These methods include satellite imaging, near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy, and DNA metabarcoding to detect a wider range of species. The scientists propose these methods be implemented to improve pre-construction biodiversity surveys and EIAs.
- A major concern by researchers is that Brazil’s Congress is currently considering legislation that would do away with the existing environmental licensing process, and reduce or eliminate existing EIA requirements.
Study: Brazilian mega-dams caused far more flooding than EIA predicted
- A satellite study of the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams in the Amazon found the area flooded by their reservoirs to be much greater than projected by the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) done as part of the Brazilian dams’ licensing process.
- Satellite images from 2006-2015 were analyzed, spanning the time immediately before, during, and after dam construction, and then these images were compared with the flooding predictions found in the EIA.
- The total flooded area upstream of the dams was found to be 69.8 percent larger than projected by the EIA. The area of natural forest flooded exceeded EIA predictions by 52 percent.
- Political considerations likely influenced the EIAs gross inaccuracy, with real world results. In 2014, Madeira River floods upriver from the dams impacted 75,000 people, killed a quarter-million livestock and caused over US $180 million in damage.
Camera trapping in the trees
- Sets of remote cameras placed in trees can detect a wide range of diurnal and nocturnal arboreal vertebrates and help assess species presence relative to environmental factors.
- This relatively cost-effective, non-invasive monitoring technology requires effort to design and set up, but it can function for months with minimal oversight or maintenance.
- Three studies suggest solutions to various challenges—including leaf-triggered photos, high humidity, and insect infestation—facing research teams interested in surveying and monitoring vertebrate communities in the canopy.
From cryosphere to blogosphere, sea ice enthusiasts track Arctic melt
- Arctic sea ice extent has fallen precipitously since 2007, far surpassing all 18 computer models forecasting a drastically slower decline that wasn’t supposed to pick up speed until after 2050.
- As a result of these startling annual events, a dedicated group of bloggers is trying to parse out what is really happening in the Arctic. Led by Neven Curlin (known as Neven Acropolis on the web), the Arctic Sea Ice Blog and the Forum is citizen science at its best.
- Approximately 1,250 bloggers now gather annually online to work through all the conflicting seasonal Arctic evidence to make a forecast for the fate of the ice in September — will sea ice extent fall to a new low, impacting the world’s weather?
Creating corridors: researchers use GPS telemetry data to map elephants’ movements
- Elephant corridors in the Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem are threatened by human development, which has fragmented habitat and intensified human-elephant conflict.
- With GPS telemetry data from three bull elephants, researchers mapped the elephants’ habitat use and connectivity from 2006-2008 and compared it to data from 1960 using new analysis techniques.
- The expansion of agriculture and villages decreased corridor connectivity and disrupted elephants’ movements, according to results of a circuit theory model.
As Arctic sea ice shows record decline, scientists prepare to go blind
- Starting in the mid-1980s, the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) constructed eight “F-series” satellites, in bulk, with the plan to launch satellites in succession as each one failed to maintain a continuous record of Arctic sea ice extent.
- But in 2016, Congress cut the program, resulting in the dismantling of the last, still not launched, satellite. It is now likely that an impending failure of the last DMSP satellites in orbit will leave the world blind until at least 2022, even as the Arctic shows signs of severe instability and decline.
- While international and U.S. monitoring is still being done for ice thickness, the Trump administration has proposed cuts to satellite missions, including NOAA’s next two polar orbiting satellites, NASA’s PACE Satellite (to monitor ocean and atmospheric pollution), and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (for carbon dioxide atmospheric measurements).
- All of these cuts in satellite monitoring come at a time when the world is seeing massive changes due to climate change, development and population growth. One satellite program spared Trump’s budgetary axe so far is Landsat 9, which tracks deforestation and glacial recession. How Congress will deal with Trump’s proposed cuts is unknown.
Location, location, location: Facts and FAQs about radio telemetry
- In this second of the Mongabay-Wildtech series on “What is that technology?” we examine radio telemetry, in the form of electronic tags used to monitor animals as they move about their daily lives to better understand how far they travel, what environments they use, and how to keep them safe.
- Radio-based tags and satellite-based tags, which include GPS tags, all communicate via radio signals but differ in how the signals communicate, the information they provide, and the energy needed to produce them.
- UHF and VHF radio tags–described in this post–are cheap, small, light, and long-lasting, but require human presence to receive the signals and locate the animal.
- Scientists can compile these point locations to map species’ local distributions, identify home ranges and migration patterns, and compare these with locations of water, food species, or human activity.
Going viral: How advancements in Ebola disease detection in wild apes can help to prevent dangerous outbreaks
- Research using a non-invasive method of detecting Ebola virus antibodies from wild ape dung has shown that non-human great apes can survive the disease.
- Early detection and disease monitoring in wildlife populations can prevent the transmission of zoonotic diseases such as Ebola from being transmitted to humans.
- A more comprehensive assessment of health threats to wild great apes can help to determine whether the Ebola virus is of primary concern in a given gorilla or chimpanzee population.
Do the Locomotion: Bio-inspired technology creates amphibious robots that mimic salamander movement
- The Salamandra robotica I and Salamandra robotica II model the system of neural networks that guides both swimming and walking movements in live salamanders.
- The Pleurobot takes bio-inspired engineering a step further by modeling salamander skeletal kinematics.
- Amphibious biobots can be used for a variety of applications, including environmental monitoring animal behavior studies, and search-and- rescue missions.
Testing the water: identifying marine communities through eDNA
- All organisms shed traces of their biological material, which contains their unique DNA, into the environment. Researchers using a technique called metabarcoding to sequence this environmental DNA (eDNA) in water can detect the presence of multiple taxa in a single sample.
- eDNA surveillance is already being used as a tool for detecting invasive species and confirming the presence of endangered or cryptic organisms in an area, thereby influencing management decisions.
- Recent studies suggest that eDNA metabarcoding has the potential to support conservation efforts as a biodiversity monitoring tool in the marine environment.
- eDNA metabarcoding of water samples has proven to be an effective, non-invasive survey technique that allows researchers to assess the biodiversity of an aquatic environment in a fraction of the time that traditional manual survey methods require.
KEDR: Watching over the cedar forests of the Russian Far East
- KEDR uses an algorithm to automatically analyze real-time satellite images for various canopy changes to provide forest managers precise logging intelligence so they can quickly counteract violations.
- The technology could help conserve the critically endangered Amur tiger and leopard that inhabit these forests.
- KEDR is now being implemented in two provinces and has been recommended for use throughout the country. The tool will continue to be developed with technological upgrades, high-precision satellite imagery, new algorithms and artificial intelligence.
Beyond data collection — the social and political effects of environmental sensor proliferation
- Sensors are increasingly collecting data everywhere, changing how we relate to and manage the environment.
- These data answer researchers’ scientific questions but can also generate social, cultural and political effects, reinforcing the need for more data.
- In a new book, “Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet,” Dr. Jennifer Gabrys suggests that the future of environmental management is a question of how and whether to “program” the Earth.
Acoustic monitoring: mapping ecosystems by animal calls
- Studies that confirm the presence of particular species are needed to understand and conserve them appropriately, but such studies are often costly, time-consuming and thus few and far between.
- Researchers from the University of Puerto Rico are deploying monitoring stations in the field, which record and process animal sounds to automate the collection and classification of audio data to determine species presence and compare animal communities.
- While the technology is limited to animals that call and requires some human expertise in identifying these sounds, it can provide detailed, long-term data for monitoring animal communities and informing wildlife management strategies
EGI: Filling in the gaps in law enforcement for the online wildlife trade
- Enforcement Gaps Interface (EGI) uses a computational algorithm to mine hundreds of commercial sites for ads potentially containing illegal wildlife and wildlife products.
- EGI aims to help law enforcement agencies, retailers and nongovernmental organizations reduce and ultimately eliminate rampant online wildlife trafficking.
- EGI’s creators are further developing it to incorporate more languages and image recognition into its searches.
Searching for sawfish following the clues of environmental DNA
- Environmental DNA (eDNA) is genetic material extracted directly from environmental samples, such as soil, water and air, rather than from an evident biological source. eDNA analysis is revolutionizing species detection and genetic analyses for conservation, management and research.
- Researchers in northern Australia are using eDNA to locate and help conserve critically endangered largetooth sawfish.
- eDNA technology is rapidly evolving; it could become completely field-based and be used to determine abundance and applied to meta-genomic ecosystem surveys to predict spatial and temporal biodiversity patterns.
How’s my target species recovering? A new tool to help you evaluate
- Professionals in conservation, agriculture, development, and research seek to assess the status of biodiversity targets and their responses to threats.
- A new biodiversity monitoring manual brings together numerous resources to aid students, researchers, and resource managers in assessing resource health over time.
- The manual is freely available online from Germany’s GIZ to facilitate informed natural resource decision-making.
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