PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Protecting nature on the fly

Ecological properties of nature reserve areas can now be analyzed by laser scanning from a plane

Protecting nature on the fly
2015-04-14
(Press-News.org) Simply declaring a region as a nature protection area is not enough, regular monitoring of its ecological condition is also necessary. Since Nature protection areas already cover almost one fifth of the surface of the European Union, it is impossible to inspect such a vast area in the traditional way on foot. Therefore, new methods are being developed to monitor Europe's nature protection areas from the air. Short laser pulses are sent to the ground, and information on the status of the habitat can be deduced from the reflected light signals using elaborate computer algorithms.

Laser Scanning from the Air

"The rules of the Natura 2000 network of nature protection areas request the evaluation of the conservation status of protected region at least every six years", says Professor Norbert Pfeifer (Vienna University of Technology). "This can only be achieved with the help of remote sensing."

Planes fly at an altitude of 500 to 2000 metres, scanning a strip 300 to 800 metres wide. About ten points per square meter are sampled using an infrared laser pulsing half a million times a second. The pulses are reflected and return to the plane. From their travel time, the exact distance between the plane and the ground can be calculated, creating a detailed 3D map of the landscape.

Software Identifies Structure

"Our team has developed special classification software which can use this data to distinguish different types of vegetation", says Norbert Pfeifer. Even disturbing factors such as weeds and vehicle tracks can be identified.

The 3D map obtained by the laser pulses contains much more information than a simple aerial photograph. When a forest is scanned, not all the laser light is reflected by the tree tops. The lower layers of the vegetation are surveyed as well. Ecologically healthy woodland does not only consist of various tree and shrub layers, but also of a layer of herbs and grasses. Whether or not these sub-canopy levels exist can be mathematically deduced from the infrared data.

"When people process remote sensing data for ecological monitoring, they usually focus on very specific parameters which are easy to derive", says Norbert Pfeifer. "Our approach is quite different. We use the data to calculate precisely the same parameters as they are collected in a site inspection by human ecologists." Therefore the data complies with EU regulations and can directly be compared to older data.

Given the power of the new method, it should be possible to go one step further. "We believe that an even better characterization of a region's biodiversity can be obtained when we do not focus on site inspection parameters but rather try to define new parameters which are easier to obtain from above", says Pfeifer.

Agreement Between Humans and Computer

The newly developed computer algorithms were tested in the nature protection area of Ágota-puszta, Püspökladány (Hungary), consisting of an intricate mosaic of salt meadows, loess grasslands and marsh areas. Part of the field data was used to adjust the algorithms. With the rest of the data, the method was validated. "We achieved an agreement of 80 to 90% between our data and on-site observations", says Norbert Pfeifer. "This is a huge success. It is about the same level of agreement that would be expected if two different people assess the same region."

"This study is a major step forward in closing the gap between the remote sensing and conservation ecology communities", says András Zlinszky (Centre for Ecological Research, Hungary). "We have shown that it is possible to monitor Natura 2000 conservation status by remote sensing, exactly following the rules laid out by the local ecology experts."

The research was conducted within the EU funded project ChangeHabitats2, http://www.changehabitats.eu/. The study about the new remote sensing technique has been published in the journal Remote Sensing.

INFORMATION:

Further information:
Prof. Norbert Pfeifer
TU WIen
Gusshausstraße 25-29, 1040 Wien
norbert.pfeifer@tuwien.ac.at


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Protecting nature on the fly

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

The cost and quality of cancer care in Health Affairs' April issue

2015-04-14
Cancer Mortality Reductions Were Greatest Among Countries Where Cancer Care Spending Rose The Most, 1995-2007. Warren Stevens of Precision Health Economics, Dana P. Goldman of the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California, and coauthors compared cancer care across sixteen countries over time, examining changes in cancer spending and two measures of cancer mortality (amenable and excess mortality). They found that, compared to low-spending health systems, high-spending systems had consistently lower cancer mortality in the ...

A new tool for understanding ALS: Patients' brain cells

2015-04-14
Fast Facts: More than 30,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Johns Hopkins researchers have transformed skin cells donated by ALS patients into brain cells affected by the progressive, fatal disease. The resulting cell library is being used by researchers worldwide in the quest for better ALS treatments. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have transformed skin cells from patients with Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), into brain cells affected by the progressive, ...

New WHO statement on public reporting of clinical trial results announced

2015-04-14
The World Health Organization (WHO) have announced a new statement on the public disclosure of clinical trial results which updates and expands a previous statement that noted the "the registration of all interventional trials is a scientific, ethical, and moral responsibility." The new statement includes timelines by which researchers are expected to report clinical trials results. In an Essay published in this week's PLOS Medicine Vasee Moorthy and colleagues from the WHO outline the rationale behind the new statement. A new element in the WHO statement is the definition ...

Extreme geohazards: Reducing the disaster risk and increasing resilience

2015-04-14
Extreme hazards - rare, high-impact events - pose a serious and underestimated threat to humanity. The extremes of the broad ensemble of natural and anthropogenic hazards can lead to global disasters and catastrophes. Because they are rare and modern society lacks experience with them, they tend to be ignored in disaster risk management. While the probabilities of most natural hazards do not change much over time, the sensitivity of the built environment and the vulnerability of the embedded socio-economic fabric have increased rapidly. Exposure to geohazards has increased ...

New CU-Boulder technique could slash energy used to produce many plastics

2015-04-14
April 14, 2015 A new material developed at the University of Colorado Boulder could radically reduce the energy needed to produce a wide variety of plastic products, from grocery bags and cling wrap to replacement hips and bulletproof vests. Approximately 80 million metric tons of polyethylene is produced globally each year, making it the most common plastic in the world. An essential building block for manufacturing polyethylene is ethylene, which must be separated from a nearly identical chemical, ethane, before it can be captured and used. The similarities between ...

Quantization of 'surface Dirac states' could lead to exotic applications

2015-04-14
Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan have uncovered the first evidence of an unusual quantum phenomenon--the integer quantum Hall effect--in a new type of film, called a 3D topological insulator. In doing this, they demonstrated that "surface Dirac states"--a particular form of massless electrons--are quantized in these materials, meaning that they only take on certain discrete values. These discoveries could help move science forward toward the goal of dissipationless electronics--electronic devices that can operate without producing the ...

Unearthing new antivirals

2015-04-14
SAN DIEGO (April 14, 2015) -- A team of biologists from San Diego State University has developed a platform for identifying drugs that could prove to be effective against a variety of viral diseases. In a pair of recent articles in the Journal of Biomolecular Screening and the Journal of Visualized Experiments, the researchers describe how the methodology works, using dengue virus as an example, and they identify a novel drug which may someday be used to combat the disease. Over the past several years, the researchers, led by SDSU biologist Roland Wolkowicz, have been ...

Ebola analysis finds virus hasn't become deadlier, yet

2015-04-14
Research from The University of Manchester using cutting edge computer analysis reveals that despite mutating, Ebola hasn't evolved to become deadlier since the first outbreak 40 years ago. The surprising results demonstrate that whilst a high number of genetic changes have been recorded in the virus, it hasn't changed at a functional level to become more or less virulent. The findings, published in the journal Virology, demonstrate that the much higher death toll during the current outbreak, with the figure at nearly 10,500, isn't due to mutations/evolution making ...

Scientists create invisible objects without metamaterial cloaking

Scientists create invisible objects without metamaterial cloaking
2015-04-14
Physicists from ITMO University, Ioffe Institute and Australian National University managed to make homogenous cylindrical objects completely invisible in the microwave range. Contrary to the now prevailing notion of invisibility that relies on metamaterial coatings, the scientists achieved the result using a homogenous object without any additional coating layers. The method is based on a new understanding of electromagnetic wave scattering. The results of the study were published in Scientific Reports. The scientists studied light scattering from a glass cylinder filled ...

Children with type 1 diabetes at fivefold risk of hospitalization

2015-04-14
The number of children being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes is increasing 3-4% every year and more so in school-aged children. Treating the condition is complex and poor management can often lead to medical emergencies that result in hospitalisation, placing ever greater demands on health services. To improve the efficiency of these services and reduce potentially unnecessary admissions, researchers wanted find out how often children with type 1 diabetes are admitted to hospital compared with children of the same age, gender and socioeconomic class, living in the same ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Exercise as an anti-ageing intervention to avoid detrimental impact of mental fatigue

UMass Amherst Nursing Professor Emerita honored as ‘Living Legend’

New guidelines aim to improve cystic fibrosis screening

Picky eaters by day, buffet by night: Butterfly, moth diets sync to plant aromas

Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Leanne Redman honored with the E. V. McCollum Award from the American Society for Nutrition

CCNY physicists uncover electronic interactions mediated via spin waves

Researchers’ 3D-printing formula may transform future of foam

Nurture more important than nature for robotic hand

Drug-delivering aptamers target leukemia stem cells for one-two knockout punch

New study finds that over 95% of sponsored influencer posts on Twitter were not disclosed

New sea grant report helps great lakes fish farmers navigate aquaculture regulations

Strain “trick” improves perovskite solar cells’ efficiency

How GPS helps older drivers stay on the roads

Estrogen and progesterone stimulate the body to make opioids

Dancing with the cells – how acoustically levitating a diamond led to a breakthrough in biotech automation

Machine learning helps construct an evolutionary timeline of bacteria

Cellular regulator of mRNA vaccine revealed... offering new therapeutic options

Animal behavioral diversity at risk in the face of declining biodiversity

Finding their way: GPS ignites independence in older adult drivers

Antibiotic resistance among key bacterial species plateaus over time

‘Some insects are declining but what’s happening to the other 99%?’

Powerful new software platform could reshape biomedical research by making data analysis more accessible

Revealing capillaries and cells in living organs with ultrasound

American College of Physicians awards $260,000 in grants to address equity challenges in obesity care

Researchers from MARE ULisboa discover that the European catfish, an invasive species in Portugal, has a prolonged breeding season, enhancing its invasive potential

Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, FAACR, honored with the 2025 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

Solar cells made of moon dust could power future space exploration

Deporting immigrants may further shrink the health care workforce

Border region emergency medical services in migrant emergency care

Resident physician intentions regarding unionization

[Press-News.org] Protecting nature on the fly
Ecological properties of nature reserve areas can now be analyzed by laser scanning from a plane