Assistant research professor Patrick Jantz of SICCS has received a prestigious grant from NASA\u2019s Biological Diversity and Ecological Conservation Program to lead a groundbreaking project aimed at protecting some of the world\u2019s most iconic wild cats. The initiative, titled Upscaling Connecting Landscapes, will harness cutting-edge NASA Earth observation data to help conservation organizations model and mitigate the impacts of landscape change on big cat populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Working in collaboration with global conservation leaders Panthera and the University of Oxford\u2019s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), Jantz and his team are developing a user-friendly, web-based decision support tool. The tool will enable researchers and policymakers to analyze habitat connectivity for five focal species: lion, tiger, jaguar, clouded leopard, and puma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although global in scope, the project has significant relevance to North America. Jantz noted the potential to identify key wildlife corridors for puma and jaguar in Arizona, with local sightings underscoring the importance of regional conservation efforts. \u201cI saw a puma in the wild near Lake Mary a couple of years ago. I won\u2019t forget it,\u201d he shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the next three years, the research team\u2014comprising Jantz, another research professor, a postdoctoral scholar, and an incoming master\u2019s student in Informatics\u2014will collaborate with Panthera and WildCRU to ensure the software is a practical resource for conservation planning. The tool is expected to inform strategies such as educational outreach, wildlife corridor identification, and the placement of infrastructure like underpasses and bridges to reduce human-wildlife conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project officially launched in March 2025 and is slated to continue through early 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Assistant research professor Patrick Jantz of SICCS has received a prestigious grant from NASA\u2019s Biological Diversity and Ecological Conservation Program to lead a groundbreaking project aimed at protecting some of the world\u2019s most iconic wild cats. The initiative, titled Upscaling Connecting Landscapes, will harness cutting-edge NASA Earth observation data to help conservation organizations model and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":836,"featured_media":6616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"4urgent","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/836"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7814,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813\/revisions\/7814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}