FILE – A tiger is seen at Ranthambore National Park in Sawai Madhopur, India, on April 12, 2015. (AP Photo/Satyajeet Singh Rathore, File)
(NewsNation) — Scientists are developing a system to monitor tiger habitat in real time using NASA satellite imagery and the computing power of Google Earth Engine.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, the number of tigers in the wild has been declining for nearly a century. Although tiger numbers are starting to “increase,” there are still only about 5,575 tigers left in the world, and “much more needs to be done to conserve this species,” WWF said. There is.
But now the USDA says a “breakthrough” has been made with TCL 3.0, a program that combines space technology with “ground data collection” to monitor tigers.
“This is a way to look at both the big picture and the local changes that are occurring,” said Eric W. Sanderson, vice president of urban conservation at the New York Botanical Garden and lead author of the tiger study. states. Conservation magazine said in a statement released in December. “The ultimate goal is to stabilize tiger populations across their range by monitoring changes in real time.”
TCL 3.0 focuses specifically on tigers, whose ancestors first appeared in Eurasia 62 million years ago. These tigers have historically ranged from the Caspian Sea to the Russian Far East and south to the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, and Bali.
The total area of TCL (Tiger Conservation Landscape) decreased from 1,025,000 sq km to approximately 912,000 sq km between 2001 and 2020. This represented a range-wide decline of 11%, with the largest declines in Southeast Asia and southern China.
Approximately 63 TCLs are spread across 10 countries. India is home to about 3,000 of the world's remaining tigers, living in 35 landscapes.
India, Nepal, Bhutan, northern China, and southeastern Russia all show tiger habitat expansion, indicating the potential for tiger range expansion in restored landscapes.
“Researchers found that if these habitats had sufficient prey and tigers were introduced sustainably, the area occupied by tigers could increase by 50%,” a USDA news release said.
The main cause of involvement for Panthera tigris, the largest cat on the planet, is habitat loss, the USDA wrote.
To address this, the authors write in December, it is important to know when and where habitat loss is occurring.
Yet, until now, there has been no way to measure and monitor changes in the condition of tigers and their habitat or to continuously update the data.
But now Earth observations such as VIIRS, MODIS and Landsat products are providing a “comprehensive picture of the impacts of human activities” on critical habitats, said Laura Rogers, associate program manager for NASA's Ecological Conservation Program. Therefore, the management approach could be changed.
This analysis system provides countries with information to help sustain tiger populations, including priority landscapes that need protection and changes in habitat extent and quality. This provides an “early warning system” for invasion and habitat degradation.
TCL 3.0 also analyzes the “human footprint,” or a measure of people's impact on the landscape. All of this allows scientists to “assess in real time” what is happening to Asia's forest ecosystems.
“The system-wide view provided by TCL 3.0 is a game-changing innovation that will enable the tiger species to thrive,” said Rogers.
