Satellites used to protect endangered sharks

By Helen Briggs BBC News

8 April 2019

Satellites scanning the oceans are a valuable new tool to protect sharks, according to scientists.

A review of evidence suggests endangered sharks can be protected from threats such as illegal fishing, using the technology.

Whales, turtles and birds are already being monitored from space, raising hopes that the technique can be applied in the conservation of other species.

Many sharks are on the brink of extinction.

Populations of sharks, rays and skates (elasmobranchs) have declined dramatically over the past 50 years.

"New technologies such as this are going to be really important to the conservation of sharks," said Michael Williamson of the Zoological Society London (ZSL) and King's College, London.

Over-fishing is one of the biggest causes of the decline in sharks, through accidental or illegal targeting.

Continued

Smile! Satellites can see your illegal fishing from space

By Amelia Urry

If a fish falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it … wait, is that not how it goes? Let’s put it this way: If a fishing boat illegally scoops up a load of fish in the middle of the ocean and no one is there to see it, it’s still illegal — but until now there has not been much anyone could do about it.

It turns out that satellites a few hundred miles above earth are a lot better at surveying the high seas than, say, a lone Coast Guard boat with a spyglass, especially in the most remote waters where fishermen may be used to acting with impunity — ignoring quotas, transferring fish from ship to ship, dumping bycatch, even changing the vessel’s name between ports like a Shakespearian youth slipping casually into drag. Thanks to new projects in high-powered satellite surveillance, it may be possible to put an end to pirate fishing once and for all.

This is good news for, let me see, about a billion people.

Illegal fishing takes as much as 26 million metric tons of fish from the sea every year, or about 1 in 5 fish sold, for a grand theft of $23.5 billion total (or, to put it yet another way, almost 16 times the GDP of Belize or a mere seventh of the market value of Facebook). That’s money that doesn’t go to the fishermen who play by the rules, while lawbreakers put pressure on already overfished stocks like tuna and swordfish. And while illegal fishing has been getting a lot of press – notably, President Obama issued a memo on the subject last month — it’s hard to make a real dent in it without some serious international cooperation. Ships need to be traceable as they travel from one country’s maritime oversight into another’s, and enforcement needs to be stern enough that the risks of fishing illegally outweigh the rewards.

Continued

Satellites to help spot and count whales

February 2014: Satellites in space can be used to count whales, and ultimately estimate their population size, say scientists.

Using very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery, alongside image processing software, they were able to automatically detect and count whales breeding in part of the Golfo Nuevo, Peninsula Valdes in Argentina.

The new method, published this week in the journal PLoS ONE, could revolutionise how whale population size is estimated. Marine mammals are extremely difficult to count on a large scale and traditional methods, such as counting from platforms or land, can be costly and inefficient. 

Lead author Peter Fretwell from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) says: “Whale populations have always been difficult to assess; traditional means of counting them are localized, expensive and lack accuracy. The ability to count whales automatically, over large areas in a cost effective way will be of great benefit to conservation efforts for this and potentially other whale species.” 

satellite versus aerial photos

Continued

Of Stars and Stripes: NASA Satellites Used to Predict Zebra Migrations

Aug. 7, 2013 — One of the world's longest migrations of zebras occurs in the African nation of Botswana, but predicting when and where zebras will move has not been possible until now. Using NASA rain and vegetation data, researchers can track when and where arid lands begin to green, and for the first time anticipate if zebras will make the trek or, if the animals find poor conditions en route, understand why they will turn back.

Covering an area of approximately 8,500 square miles (22,000 square kilometers), Botswana's Okavango Delta is one end of the second-longest zebra migration on Earth, a 360-mile (580-kilometer) round trip to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans -- the largest salt pan system on the planet. Zebras walk an unmarked route that takes them to the next best place for grazing, while overhead thundering cloudbursts of late October rains drive new plant growth, filling pockmarks across this largest inland delta in the world. In a matter of weeks, the flooded landscape could yield ecosystems flush with forage for the muscled movers.

Continued

NASA satellites reveal fire hotspots that are polluting Singapore

Fires lit to clear forest for palm oil and wood pulp plantations

June 2013. WWF has renewed calls for zero-burn policies to be enacted and enforced, as satellite hotspot analysis showed the single jurisdiction of Riau Province, Sumatra as the location of over 88% per cent of the fire hotspots that have seen Singapore and parts of Malaysia blanketed with the worst haze and pollution since 1997.

Fire hotspots are in concession areas

The call comes as Sumatra NGO coalition Eyes on the Forest (EoF) - WWF-Indonesia, Jikalhari and Wahli Riau - released a new analysis linking NASA indications of fire hotspots to concession areas. Fire and haze information is now available online through interactive maps through a joint project of EoF and Google Earth Outreach.

9000 fire hotspots

According to the most current analysis, more than 9000 fire hotspots were mapped in Sumatra by NASA satellites between 1 and 24 June, with more than 8000 in Riau province. Nearly 40 per cent overlapped with large scale pulpwood concessions or oil palm plantations.

WWF-Indonesia and EoF caution that further investigation will be required and is underway to better indicate responsibility for the fires. Concession holders have legal responsibilities over concessions but it does not necessarily follow that the companies are responsible for lighting the fires.

Palm oil 

Many are likely linked to the supply of palm oil. WWF-Indonesia this week released a report detailing the supply of oil palm fruit illegally grown inside the iconic Tesso Nilo National Park. The hotspot analysis shows the Tesso Nilo forest complex (the national park and two adjacent selective logging concessions) to be a significant source of haze, with 449 hotspots (6 per cent of the overall total for Riau) recorded there.

Continued

Satellites Spy Beetle Attacks on Forests

A new computer program detected a slow-motion decline, and subsequent revival, of forests in the Pacific Northwest in recent years. But what was behind this mysterious pattern? 

"It was, as it turns out, bugs," said Robert Kennedy, a remote sensing specialist at Boston University who designed the computer program, in a NASA statement.

Kennedy's program, called LandTrendr, can detect minute changes in the health of forests by analyzing wavelengths of light given off by the landscape and recorded in satellite images. Different types of vegetation reflect different wavelengths of light, often in ways that the naked eye can't detect.

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/26286-beetles-eat-forests-from-space.html