Outer space and biodiversity: The critical link to ensure our future sustainability

Overview: The importance of biodiversity protection

Over half of the world’s biodiversity has disappeared since 1970, with an estimated one million animal and plant species now threatened with extinction. At a time when ecosystems, habitats and species are declining at rates that are unprecedented in human history, biodiversity protection is critical to the future sustainability of our planet, our health and our economy.

In a significant development, on 19 December 2022, representatives from 188 countries adopted a new agreement at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Canada (COP 15). The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (Framework) replaces the CBD’s Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the Aichi Targets. It seeks to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, setting out the global vision of a world living in harmony with nature by 2050. The Framework consists of four overarching goals (each with a series of sub-goals) to be achieved by 2050, and 23 urgent action-oriented global targets for 2030.

Among the overarching goals and sub-goals are to:

• enhance the integrity, connectivity and resilience of all natural ecosystems;

• halt human-induced extinction of known threatened species (and to reduce tenfold the extinction rate and risk of all species);

• maintain genetic diversity within populations of wild and domesticated species; and

• ensure the sustainable use and management of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.

Perhaps the most well-publicised of the global targets is to ensure that, by 2030, at least 30% of the world’s terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas is effectively conserved and managed (target 3).

Why accurate data is so important to achieve biodiversity goals

However, two other important global targets identified in the Framework are to:

• strengthen capacity-building and development, including through enhanced scientific research and monitoring (target 20); and

• ensure the best available data, information and knowledge are accessible to decision-makers, practitioners and the public to guide effective and equitable governance, the effective management of biodiversity, and enhanced communication, awareness-raising, education, monitoring and research (target 21).

In that sense, targets 20 and 21 of the Framework reflect that the capture of accurate data is critical to the achievement of the four overarching goals – enabling robust monitoring and mapping of biodiversity and habitat loss, and guiding decisions on the design of effective measures to protect species and reverse population declines.

So where does outer space come into the picture?

Imaging from satellites in outer space, bolstered by rapidly advancing technology, offer the unique and game-changing potential to capture the quality data needed to advance biodiversity conservation.

As identified in a major recent international cross-institutional study:

Many biodiversity-relevant measures may be retrieved from remote sensing (airborne and satellite), including measures of change in ecosystem structure and function, community composition, species traits and species populations. As such, current and emerging next-generation satellite remote sensing is an ideal tool for the continuous detection of changes in biodiversity from local to global levels, thereby filling data gaps in the spatial and temporal coverage of in situ observations (Skidmore et al, “Priority List of Biodiversity Metrics to Observe From Space”, Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2021).

The study lists 120 essential variables that can be measured using remote sensing data, including habitat structure, ecosystem disturbances, community diversity, population abundance, ecosystem physiology, species physiology, ecosystem phenology and species phenology.

While noting the significant expansion of Earth-observing satellites in outer space in the last decade, the study identifies that “interest is shifting to how engineers can design and build satellites that specifically address the needs to the biodiversity user community”.

The study also refers to the importance of “free and open data” and access to ground research linked to remote sensing. This theme is captured in targets 20 and 21 of the Framework, which identify accessibility of data and the sharing of information and knowledge, as well as scientific cooperation, to drive the effective implementation of biodiversity protection and conservation.

Advances in biodiversity data and mapping from outer space satellites

The United States

To date, the United States has been perhaps the most progressive country in developing nature and biodiversity-based data capability, drawing on imagery from satellites operated by NASA.

For example, Yale University has developed an interactive virtual database, the Map of Life, which tracks populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insect and plant species around the world. The database can also forecast where species will live in the future and the extent to which the habitat of these species is subject to regulatory protection measures.

The Map of Life utilises data from NASA’s Landsat satellite, and also the powerful observational capability of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites.

Additionally, researchers at Duke University have created an interactive web portal which uses a tool – the Predicting Biodiversity with a Generalised Joint Attribution Model (PBGJAM) – that brings together NASA’s remotely sensed Earth data, as well as airborne and ground-based information and ecological and climate forecasts, to track how climate change will impact species and lead to competition for suitable habitats. There is scope for PBGJAM to be further developed to track other biodiversity metrics in future, as well as to proactively manage habitat conservation in a manner that protects vulnerable species.

NASA has also funded, under its Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) program, the Advanced Phenological Information System (APIS), which relies on millions of field-based observations, near-surface cameras and satellite data to explore and synthesise phenology observations at different points in time and on different spatial scales. APIS is already helping to track how the leafing, flowering and reproduction of plants is impacted by changes in habitat and climate change.

Biodiversity-specific data would be readily amenable to being captured as part of the AIST program in future, with the program specifically designed to fund evolutionary and disruptive projects to effectively monitor and understand the Earth, with a focus on new observation measurements and information products.

Japan

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) operates the Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM), which observes the Earth’s essential variables such as surface temperature, water vapour, vegetation and snow and ice area, using second generation global imagers on board Earth observation satellites. The data collected can be used to map habitat changes and the impact of climate change on land and marine biodiversity.

JAXA also operates JJ-FAST (JICA-JAXA Forest Early Warning System in the Tropics), the key feature of which is an Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS-2) that uses synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to monitor deforestation in tropical forests in 77 countries.

Europe

The European Space Agency’s WorldCover project – completed in October 2021 – provides what is essentially a “global land map”. The project uses data from both the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites of the European Union’s Copernicus Program to provide accurate, timely and high-resolution information on land use, including for biodiversity monitoring and climate change mapping. Importantly, the radar capability of these satellites can penetrate cloud cover, and can also function in both daylight and night-time conditions, imaging the entire Earth every five days.

And in April 2022, the German environmental satellite EnMAP was successfully launched into space. Over the next few years, the satellite will take pictures of the Earth's surface in around 250 colours, or “spectral bands", providing information on the condition of vegetation, soil and oceans that will function as baseline data to monitor biodiversity loss and environmental pollution.

Looking ahead

While these existing systems are highly beneficial, and provide publically accessible data that can be shared in global efforts to tackle biodiversity loss, the key now is to invest in more advanced data capture relevant to specific biodiversity metrics. As the international study referred to above has identified, to enable truly global monitoring of biodiversity, there is a need for “discussion between ecologists, space agency engineers and remote sensing experts to ensure that remote sensing satellites are being developed to meet the global need for biodiversity data”.

These efforts will also require:

1. ongoing funding commitments from national space agencies, as well as cooperation and collaboration among those various agencies; and
2. public-private partnerships that incentivise the development of enhanced technological capability in a way that is meaningful to biodiversity tracking and measurement of the progress towards achieving the goals of the Framework, that are so critical to our future sustainability and survival.