This Is How Satellites Will Pinpoint Earth’s Most Vulnerable Ecosystems
Over the past decade, space agencies have launched several Earth-observing satellites that monitor climate change, deforestation, ocean acidification, and other environmental crises linked to human activity. Despite the protests of critics like Ted Cruz, who thinks “NASA’s
core mission" should be centered on other planets, not our own, space
scientists and conservationists have already made great scientific
yields by partnering together and sharing data.
That said, there
is a lot more work to be done to strengthen and streamline the Venn
diagram between satellite operators and ecologists. Indeed, according to a new Nature comment
by biodiversity specialists Andrew Skidmore and Nathalie Pettorelli,
one of the biggest problems facing this fledgling partnership is simply
communication.
"With global wildlife populations halved in just
40 years, there is a real urgency to identify variables that both
capture key aspects of biodiversity change and can be monitored
consistently and globally,” Pettorelli said in a statement.
“Satellite
remote sensing is crucial to getting long-term global coverage,” said
the authors in their piece. “But there is no agreement on how to
translate these measurements into metrics that are relevant for
biodiversity monitoring.”
Satellite image of Haitian deforestation. Image: NASA
