Using drones to map and monitor changes in kelp forest canopy after an ecological regime shift

By Vienna Saccomanno, The Nature Conservancy. In partnership with: The University of California, Los Angeles, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Greater Farallones Association, Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, Hog Island Oyster Co., and California State University Monterey Bay. Kelp forests are found along one-quarter of the planet’s coastlines and are critical to maintaining the diversity and…

Beyond large-scale vegetation phenology! Are time series also useful to map ecologically relevant small-scale vegetation dynamics?

By Ines Standfuß, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt Animal habitats are not only subject to alterations by regular phenomena like seasonal variations, but are increasingly exposed to human intervention. The most prominent example is likely human-induced climate change that is modifying environmental conditions worldwide. In addition to climate change, which affects entire regions mainly…

Mapping remote seascapes with Copernicus Sentinel Satellite data

By Aurélie Shapiro – Senior Remote Sensing Specialist, WWF-Germany Accompanying the article: “Cloud-native Seascape Mapping of Mozambique’s Quirimbas National Park with Sentinel-2” The coral reefs and associated seascapes of norther Mozambique are some of the most resilient, intact in the world, part of a global portfolio of 50 important reefs. Alas, in the time of…

Special issue: Ecoacoustics and Biodiversity Monitoring

by Dan Stowell, Queen Mary University of London, UK & Jérôme Sueur, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France Can monitoring sounds help us to meet the world’s biodiversity targets? Nature sound recordings have been collected for over a hundred years, with an exponential increase since the 1950s. Most such recordings were taken…

Using a fixed-wing, water-landing UAV to classify tropical marine habitats

by Sophia L. Ellis Accompanying the paper: Influence of altitude on tropical marine habitat classification using imagery from fixed‐wing, water‐landing UAV s Tropical marine habitats within a seascape form some of the most productive ecosystems in the coastal zone. They provide important ecosystem services and are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Fine-scale monitoring of these…