New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Science News
from research organizations

Biodiversity of insects modeled from space satellite data

Date:
October 21, 2019
Source:
University of Würzburg
Summary:
With freely available radar data from satellites, biodiversity in forests can be analysed very well. Researchers now report that biodiversity even of tiny insects can be reliably modeled from space.
Share:
FULL STORY

The quantity and diversity of plants and animals, especially insects, is decreasing, also in Germany. For this reason, science would like to see opportunities to document the biodiversity of the planet as extensively and comprehensively as possible. In this way, it could be determined whether measures against the insect dieback are effective or not.

Satellite data are well suited for this purpose. "So far, however, they have hardly been used. Scientists were of the opinion that there were no freely available data that would provide sufficientresults," says Professor Jörg Mueller from the Biocenter of Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany. This is not true. Radar data available free of charge can be used very well to monitor biodiversity from space.

This was reported by Mueller's colleague Dr. So-yeon Bae with an international team in Nature Communications. The South Korean landscape ecologist has shown in the research project DFG Biodiversity Exploratories that radar data from satellites are surprisingly well suited for describing the diversity of vertebrates, plants and fungi in forests, as well as the smallest insects and spiders. This is despite the fact that radar data are relatively coarse and despite the fact that forests with their highly dynamic and complex three-dimensional structure represent a particular challenge for monitoring biodiversity.

Twelve species groups analysed in five forest areas

The JMU-led research team compared two methods. In five forest areas, whose biodiversity was very well known by by ground truths, twelve species groups were analysed -- on the one hand with high-resolution laser scanning data and on the other hand with coarser radar data.

The results were astounding: "The free radar data provide comparably good results and are sometimes even superior to the laser," says Dr. Bae. Her conclusion: "Remote sensing is ready to carry out biodiversity monitoring from space throughout Germany. Now only better, standardized biodiversity data have to be collected on the ground nationwide." This would require spatially distributed mapping of species diversity in all forest habitats in Germany.


Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Würzburg. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Soyeon Bae, Shaun R. Levick, Lea Heidrich, Paul Magdon, Benjamin F. Leutner, Stephan Wöllauer, Alla Serebryanyk, Thomas Nauss, Peter Krzystek, Martin M. Gossner, Peter Schall, Christoph Heibl, Claus Bässler, Inken Doerfler, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Franz-Sebastian Krah, Heike Culmsee, Kirsten Jung, Marco Heurich, Markus Fischer, Sebastian Seibold, Simon Thorn, Tobias Gerlach, Torsten Hothorn, Wolfgang W. Weisser, Jörg Müller. Radar vision in the mapping of forest biodiversity from space. Nature Communications, 2019; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12737-x

Cite This Page:

University of Würzburg. "Biodiversity of insects modeled from space satellite data." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 October 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191021103902.htm>.
University of Würzburg. (2019, October 21). Biodiversity of insects modeled from space satellite data. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 10, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191021103902.htm
University of Würzburg. "Biodiversity of insects modeled from space satellite data." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191021103902.htm (accessed October 10, 2024).

Explore More

from ScienceDaily

RELATED STORIES