{"id":64231,"date":"2021-10-20T08:34:44","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T15:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=64231"},"modified":"2021-10-20T14:52:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T21:52:07","slug":"un-biodiversity-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/un-biodiversity-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"Why biodiversity\u2014and global collaboration\u2014is more important than it\u2019s ever been\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

*Editor\u2019s Note: The \u201cViews from NAU\u201d blog series highlights the thoughts of different people affiliated with NAU, including faculty members sharing opinions or research in their areas of expertise. The views expressed reflect the authors\u2019 own personal perspectives.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Patrick<\/a>By<\/strong> Patrick Jantz
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Assistant research professor, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Patrick Jantz studies landscape ecology, forest canopy structure, geoinformatics, remote sensing, connectivity and sustainable development in the Global Earth Observations and Dynamics of Ecosystems (GEODE) lab at NAU.<\/span><\/div>\n

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The Convention on Biological Diversity facilitates reporting on biodiversity status and trends around the world but many\u00a0low- and middle-income countries don\u2019t have access to the most up-to-date data.\u00a0The UN Biodiversity Lab aims to change that, providing state-of-the-art datasets for\u00a0visualization,\u00a0analysis\u00a0and reporting.\u00a0The launch of the UN Biodiversity Lab\u00a02.0\u00a0(UNBL)\u00a0marks a major milestone in the use of spatial data for sustainable development.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NAU\u2019s Global Earth Observations and Dynamics of Ecosystems (GEODE) lab was an early partner in this effort. NASA funding to our team, led by research professor Patrick Jantz and Regents\u2019 professor Scott Goetz in SICCS, helped us formulate UNBL system functionality, provide datasets and conduct outreach to country partners. With collaborators at Montana State University, the University of Northern British Columbia, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the United Nations Development Program, we developed an approach to use satellite observations to map forest integrity across Earth\u2019s tropical rainforests. High-integrity forests are tall, have minimal human disturbance, maintain high levels of native biodiversity and contain large carbon stores. As such, they are high priorities for conservation. Assessing the accuracy of such products can be challenging, but it is key to gaining acceptance in international conservation initiatives, e.g. the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity (UNCBD), which is currently being renegotiated. The GEODE lab led by Goetz developed an approach, led by Jantz, that used high-resolution aircraft lidar from the Brazilian Amazon to understand how the forest integrity product performed. We found the pan-tropical dataset did an excellent job of characterizing the structure and condition of Amazon forests. <\/span>Pat Burns<\/span><\/b>, a GEODE lab member, contributed an analysis of deforestation in high integrity forests using Google Earth Engine, leading to a high-profile\u00a0<\/span>publication<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0<\/span>Nature Ecology and Evolution<\/span><\/i>. This same effort yielded maps of fragmentation of high-integrity tropical forests. Knowing where loss and fragmentation are occurring most rapidly can help nations prioritize conservation actions to prevent fragmentation of the last strongholds of high integrity forest. <\/span>Maps of high-integrity forest and their patterns of fragmentation are available\u00a0to anyone, including conservation planners and policy makers,\u00a0through the\u00a0UNBL<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Related research in the GEODE lab\u00a0focuses on\u00a0working with three countries in South America\u00a0(Colombia, Ecuador\u00a0and\u00a0Peru)\u00a0to help identify forests that are most important for\u00a0maintaining\u00a0clean water. In\u00a0each of\u00a0the three countries,\u00a0forests are under pressure from logging, mining, grazing and agricultural\u00a0expansion. Riparian forests\u00a0along waterways\u00a0play a key role in maintaining water quality, stabilizing soil, regulating water temperature\u00a0and\u00a0mitigating\u00a0flooding. The first step in quantifying the contribution of riparian forests to stream health is\u00a0estimating the distribution of forests near stream channels.\u00a0GEODE lab Ph.D. student\u00a0<\/span>Ivan Gonzalez<\/span><\/b>\u00a0is developing an approach that uses satellite imagery, Geographic Information Systems\u00a0and hydrological modeling to systematically map riparian buffers, calculate forest cover within those buffers\u00a0and assess\u00a0rates of deforestation.\u00a0These datasets are in the process of being documented and submitted to the individual countries and to the\u00a0UNBL. More information on this effort can be found in this interactive\u00a0<\/span>story map<\/span><\/a>. These data will enable countries to improve their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPS),\u00a0increase\u00a0the national roadmaps for biodiversity\u00a0conservation\u00a0and enhance reporting on Sustainable Development Goals and the\u00a0UN CBD\u2019s\u00a0Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*Editor\u2019s Note: The \u201cViews from NAU\u201d blog series highlights the thoughts of different people affiliated with NAU, including faculty members sharing opinions or research in their areas of expertise. The views expressed reflect the authors\u2019 own personal perspectives. By Patrick Jantz Assistant research professor, School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems Dr. Patrick Jantz studies…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":64234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views-from-nau"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}