From 2-6 October the annual International Astronautical Congress took place in Baku, Azerbaijan. Tessa Buckley from our consortium partner dotSpace was invited to present the first result of the Nature FIRST program!
Management summary
The EU biodiversity strategy contains concrete objectives to protect and restore biodiversity and to address the main pressures and threats to biodiversity. However, knowledge gaps exist for many habitats and species. More and better information is needed to support the implementation and monitoring of the Birds and Habitats Directives.
In response, the consortium ‘Forensic Intelligence and Remote Sensing Technologies for nature conservation’ (Nature FIRST) proposes a number of innovations for monitoring nature by combining ecology sciences and environmental forensics with environmental observations (satellite-based and on-site). This paper examines how this novel approach results in propositions and related services for:
Biodiversity monitoring in Natura 2000 areas, for both habitats and species;
Early warning systems for the prevention of Human-Wildlife Conflicts (HWC);
Management and compliance reporting.
Services include tools as well as methods, including software, checklists, instruction videos and more.
The research objective is to move from a reactive approach and remediation of biodiversity loss to a preventive approach and a move from Human-Wildlife Conflict to Human- Wildlife Coexistence (HWCo).
This paper describes how existing technologies combined with new technologies and data science, allows proactive nature conservation management. Semantic web technology is used to create knowledge-graphs that interlink and harmonise diverse data sources to provide new insights. Forensic data science and techniques are used to equip conservation managers with observation skills. These new observations are being combined with remote sensing data from wildlife cameras (camera-traps), drones and satellites, into automated risk and likelihood maps. Finally, predictive digital twins are being developed: two species related (bear and sturgeon) and one aimed at more integral biodiversity monitoring).
To ensure the tools and methods are fit-for- purpose, they are co-developed with four field site partners, representing different habitat-species combinations in Europe:
Ancares-Courel in Spain (key species: bear, wolf)
Stara Planina Mountain (key species: bear, wolf) in Bulgaria,
Danube Delta (key species: sturgeon) in Romania
Maramures Transboundary Area (key species: bear, wolf, lynx, golden jackal) between Ukraine and Romania.
Testing of the new solutions will take place in four field site workshops. These also feature a Policy Lab, to familiarise policy makers with the tools they can use for management as well as compliance assurance purposes.
More information
You can download the full paper here,
and read all about Nature FIRST here