Space4Nature is a collaboration of Surrey University, Surrey Wildlife Trust, Buglife and Painshill Park, using satellite imagery of sites in Surrey with citizen-sourced observations, AI and ML, to pinpoint which areas of land could be joined up with similar habitats to boost wildlife and nature conservation.
Space4Nature is combining the possibilities of satellite Earth Observation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology with the power of citizen science to advance understanding of wildlife habitats and help deliver effective conservation at landscape level.
Application
A key challenge for conservation practitioners faced with increasing pressures from development, poor land management practices, pollution and climate change is to deliver solutions on a landscape level. With habitats suffering increasing fragmentation, flora and fauna are increasingly confined to small pockets of unspoilt, biodiverse territory that leaves species vulnerable to changing climactic conditions, decreasing genetic diversity and the absence of sufficient opportunities to feed, breed, migrate or find shelter.
Space4Nature, a project made possible by players of People’s Postcode Lottery and delivered by Surrey Wildlife Trust (SWT), University of Surrey, Buglife and Painshill Park Trust, aims to address this challenge by mapping habitats on a larger, more detailed scale than ever before. This will inform more ambitious conservation plans to be developed in partnership with private and public landowners and community groups.
Teams of volunteers use a specially-designed app to survey at-risk habitats, including heathlands and chalk grasslands, for specific indicator plants and other environmental features. This helps inform the development of a Machine Learning (ML) model, designed by University of Surrey, that can match these places with nearby areas of similar habitat using high resolution satellite imagery. This will enable a detailed county-wide understanding of what lives where, and which habitats should be joined up or protected to help reverse biodiversity loss and create more resilient landscapes which benefit people and wildlife.
UK Expertise
The partnership unites a diverse a range of experts. Buglife is expert at connecting and restoring habitats for invertebrates through its B-Lines programme, and Space4Nature has enabled the organisation to restore or create more than 36 hectares of pollinator-rich habitat in Surrey. SWT manages more than 60 reserves covering over 5,000 hectares for nature, has trained more than 150 volunteers on survey methodology, and works with dozens of landowners across the county to deliver Nature-Based Solutions.
The University of Surrey is focusing on mapping, observation data and ML. Essentially, the AI learns to recognise different habitats by understanding patterns of spectral reflectance in the satellite imagery, which is matched to observations on the ground. Together this data helps the team to efficiently create accurate habitat maps. To date promising progress has been made on identifying chalk grassland and heathland distribution – and the Space4Nature team is continually refining the models, using ground truthing data from a range of sites, to make them more accurate. With the implementation of local nature recovery strategies and emerging natural capital markets Space4Nature’s technology has the potential to provide data that a wide range of organisations will be able to rely on.
Space4Nature uses images from the PlanetScope mission launched by Planet Labs, part of the European Space Agency. The mission comprises more than 430 different satellites, which circle the Earth every 90 minutes at relatively low orbit (c500km). The satellites each weigh less than 6kg and measure 10x10x30cm. Together they can image almost all the land on Earth every day. They use spectral reflectance to remotely identify and measure different types of vegetation. Planet Labs provides this data free of charge to the Space4Nature project as it is for academic and research purposes.
Insight
Surrey Wildlife Trust’s Space4Nature project manager Andrew Jamieson says:
“We’ve brought together a unique partnership of technology, conservation and land management specialists to expand the frontiers of local conservation.
But Space4Nature is not just a high-tech project for professionals – it also offers a great way for local people to help learn about what lives in Surrey’s world-class landscapes, and contribute to plans to safeguard our most precious flora and fauna.
With the climate and nature crisis becoming more severe, these solutions are urgently needed to ensure that our wild places are resilient, protected and connected on an ambitious scale.”
Find out more:
University of Surrey: Space4Nature (S4N): Using Earth Observation for the assessment of Urban, Peri-Urban and Wetland Sites
Surrey Wildlife Trust: Using satellites and AI to map habitats
Space4Nature added to the Space Climate Observatory
Space4Nature targets new sites for 2024
European Space Agency’s PlanetScope
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