Space Sustainability: The New Frontier
A few weeks ago, I read an article on how the Jane Goodall Institute and Maxar Technologies brought conservation programs to scale with satellite imagery.?The article cited how Maxar’s accessible geospatial data and technology were used to monitor, analyze, and share critical information from space about chimpanzee activity in Tanzania.
The Satellite imagery and derived information layers provided a consistent view of 12 villages outside Gombe National Park. With this data, the Jane Goodall Institute field staff listened to and empowered local decision-makers to map their lands and natural resources. This allowed them to own and drive sustainable development, land use, and conservation efforts in their area.
It immediately became clear that this opportunity to use satellite imagery as a new, noninvasive method for monitoring animals was highly helpful for conservationists, managers, and researchers.
My excitement after reading the article was palpable. I immediately thought about other potential ESG and Sustainability use cases using Maxar’s satellite images. Supply chain monitoring from space, deforestation monitoring, ESG Reporting, Carbon Credit accretion–the possibilities seemed endless.
The following day, I spoke to the Maxar BD Director. After multiple discussions, we decided that my ESG experience would enable me to help lead the build-out of these use cases and business development opportunities at Maxar. It was a dream come true.
As I start my new role, it is exciting to learn firsthand about the emergence of these new technologies in remote sensing and how they are pushing forward the fields of ecology and conservation by expanding the range and scale at which researchers can conduct their studies and monitor animal populations.
Below are a few other ways that Maxar has aided the conservation of Walrus, Beluga whales, and elephants from Space.
Walrus from Space
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is teaming up with Maxar to recruit citizen scientists to assist in the conservation efforts of Atlantic and Laptev walrus populations.
Participants will examine more than 544,000 Maxar satellite images of Russia, Norway, Greenland and Canada, looking for signs of walruses with Maxar’s crowdsourcing platform called GeoHIVE. The resulting survey information will help scientists identify where walruses are spending their time and how walrus habitats are changing during five years in a warming climate, factoring into larger conservation efforts to safeguard walruses’ future and their habitats.
Elephants from Space
Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, and Machine Learning Research Group, University of Bath used Maxar’s WorldView-3 satellite imagery and deep learning to detect elephants from space with comparable accuracy to human detection capabilities.
This unobtrusive technique requires no ground presence so the animals are not disturbed, and human safety is not put at risk during data collection. Previously inaccessible areas become accessible, and cross-border areas–often crucial to conservation planning–can be surveyed without the time-consuming requirement of obtaining terrestrial permits.
Narwhal’s from Space
In recent years, space-based solutions have become more popular for monitoring wildlife populations [1]. This new method has the potential to offer a faster, safer, non-invasive, and environmentally friendly alternative platform to study marine mammals than traditional aerial surveys.
A total of 292 beluga whales and 109 narwhals were detected in the Maxar images. This study contributes to our understanding of Arctic cetacean distribution and highlights the capabilities of using satellite imagery to detect marine mammals.
References
1.?????Bertrand Charry. Mapping Arctic cetaceans from space: A case study for beluga and narwhal. Published: August 4, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254380