Drones, Aerial Photos, Cameras
Mapping tropical forest degradation with deep learning and Planet NICFI dataBackgroundForest degradation, driven by logging, fire, and infrastructure expansion, represents a major yet under-detected source of carbon emissions in tropical forests. Unlike deforestation, degradation involves partial canopy loss and is difficult to capture using conventional remote sensing due to small-scale disturbances and rapid vegetation recovery. Existing global products often underestimate degradation or fail to attribute its causes. Advances in high-resolution satellite imagery and deep learning provide new opportunities to improve detection accuracy. Open access copy available |
DETER-R: An Operational Near-Real Time Tropical Forest Disturbance Warning System Based on Sentinel-1 Time Series AnalysisBackgroundOpen access copy available |
Integrating satellite-based forest disturbance alerts improves detection timeliness and confidenceBackgroundSatellite-based forest monitoring systems are essential for detecting deforestation and supporting climate change mitigation efforts. Multiple alert systems exist, including Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD)-Landsat, GLAD-Sentinel-2, and RADD, each with distinct capabilities and limitations related to sensor type and environmental conditions. Optical systems struggle under cloud cover, while radar systems may miss certain disturbance signals. This creates uncertainty for users and highlights the need for integrated monitoring approaches. Open access copy available |
Enhancing climate change mitigation in protected areasBackgroundProtected areas (PAs) cover roughly 15–17% of the Earth’s land surface and contain a large share of remaining intact ecosystems, many of which store high densities of carbon. With global terrestrial ecosystems absorbing about 3 GtC yr⁻¹, understanding how much of this sink is associated with PAs is important for integrating biodiversity and climate strategies. However, evidence on PA effectiveness for carbon protection, across thousands of sites and multiple biomes, is dispersed and unevenly synthesized. Open access copy available |
Global, multi-scale standing deadwood segmentation in centimeter-scale aerial imagesBackgroundThis article examines how increasing tree mortality worldwide creates an urgent need for efficient approaches to map standing deadwood, including both fully dead crowns and partial canopy dieback, as a basis for monitoring forest dieback and informing management across biomes. Existing remote-sensing methods using RGB aerial imagery often work only for specific regions, resolutions, or forest types, limiting their transferability and value for global applications. Open access copy available |
Automating violence? The anti-politics of ‘smart technology’ in biodiversity conservationBackgroundBiodiversity conservation initiatives, such as the UN's post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (30x30), increasingly use smart technologies. Despite recognizing Indigenous and local rights for successful conservation, these initiatives often neglect customary rights and uses. Smart technologies, like AI, camera traps, and drones, enable new surveillance methods. State, private, and corporate actors, including big tech and BINGOs, actively adopt these tools to enhance data access and form smart governance networks. Open access copy available |
A technological biodiversity monitoring toolkit for biocreditsBackgroundOpen access copy available |
Identifying hotspots for ecosystem restoration across heterogeneous tropical savannah-dominated regionsBackgroundIn the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, ecological restoration projects are a valuable tool for meeting global sustainability climate goals. Tropical regions are at the center of attention for their high biodiversity, carbon sink, and benefits to culture and human livelihood. Tropical dry savannahs are understudied even though they cover a large portion of tropical regions. Savannah dominated landscapes are valuable for their high plant diversity and vegetation type variation and high species turnover. Benefits to restoring these ecosystem types are also understudied. Open access copy available |
