Kim Johnson: On December 28th, 1973, President
Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into
law.
The purpose of the ESA, outlined in Section
2, is to provide a means whereby the
ecosystems upon which endangered and threatened
species depend, may be conserved.
The goal of the ESA is to protect species
and their habitats enough that they are no
longer considered
endangered or threatened.
This is important because a tension between
conservation and development naturally occurs,
as people want to develop land for things
like housing, schools,
and shopping centers.
The problem arises when these developments
will impact listed species and their habitat.
Kim Johnson: The US Fish and Wildlife Service
is responsible for protecting endangered and
threatened species.
When a developer wants to build in an area
that is inhabited by a protected
species, they must create a Habitat Conservation
Plan.
Dan Cox: Habitat Conservation Plans are
a public-private partnership used to balance
the conservation needs of sensitive species,
while allowing economic development to occur
in a
responsible way.
Kim Johnson: That was Dan Cox from the
Pacific Southwest Region of the US Fish and
Wildlife Service, which is the study area
of our research.
The HCPs in that region cover more than
84 million acres.
Dan Cox: For the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
dedicating staff time to monitor HCPs to ensure
effectiveness of conservation actions and
to ensure compliance with the plan, is
virtually impossible with declining agency
budgets and increasing agency workload.
Kim Johnson: We partnered with the US Fish
and Wildlife Service to solve this problem.
Using remotely sensed imagery from sensors
on the Landsat 5, 7, and 8 satellites, we
created a
tool that can detect land use changes in HCPs
on a monthly basis.
Dr. Ross: There are many ways to use remote
sensing to detect land use change, but most
of those methods are biased by the amount
of vegetation at a given location.
Kim Johnson: Many researchers use vegetation
indices, such as NDVI, but these are limited
when a researcher wants to compare land use
change values across different landscapes.
Dr. Ross: This is really important in areas
like the southwestern United States, where
you go from sparse vegetation in areas like
Death Valley to dense vegetation in coastal
forests.
So relative greenness allows analysts to track
change without being distracted by the amount
of vegetation in one location versus the other.
Kim Johnson: The tool we developed allows
biologists at the US Fish and Wildlife Service
to select the HCP they’re interested in,
as well as input the year and month they need
relative
greenness calculated for.
This will give them better insight of change
occurring in threatened and endangered species
habitats.
