Exploring Open Source Geo
Spatial Technologies in the
context of Monitoring and
Analyzing the Behavior of
Highly Vulnerable Migratory
Species Boundless Geo and
African Elephants as a
Case Study
Rosemary Alles • Penn State • GEOG 596A • Oct 29 2014
Background: Elephants are
Disappearing
• WCS estimates historical populations may
have exceeded 25 million individuals through
the African continent.
• In 1979 populations were estimated at ~1.3
million; Current counts are at ~400,000.
• Causes
– Poaching
– HEC (Human Elephant Conflict)
– Civil Unrest
– Climate Change
Background: Poaching
Source: National Geographic
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/
10/ivory/elephant-ivory-poaching-graphic
Background: Poaching
• Poaching is the most dramatic factor affecting
elephant populations; 35,000+ elephants a
year, ~96 a day and 1 every 15 minutes to
satisfy the demand for ivory, primarily in
Asia and largely in China for ivory “trinkets”;
70% of illegally poached ivory finds its way to
China.
• Rangers die along with elephants and
increasingly wildlife trafficking, a ~$19 billion
industry, sponsors terrorism.
• Wittemyer et al: 2014 Study: Populations
have reached a tipping point: "We are
shredding the fabric of elephant society and
exterminating populations across the continent."
Background: In the first quarter of 2012, poachers
traveled more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) on
horseback from Sudan to reach northern
Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park, where
they killed more than 300 elephants in two months.
Source: STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
In the first quarter of 2012, poachers traveled more than
1,000 kilometers (620 miles) on horseback from Sudan to
reach northern Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park,
where they killed more than 300 elephants in two months.
Background: Why does it Matter?
• Ecological impacts from the loss of elephants
are predicted to be serious.
• A keystone species,dispensing
seed,excavating water wells, architecting
forests, savannas and deserts; a myriad
species of endemic fauna and flora in African
ecosystems depend on the survival of
elephants.
• Dr. Samuel Wasser from the Center of
Conservation Biology, UW:
– “They are environmental architects. They keep woods
down in the savannah and are the most important
dispersers of seeds of rain forest trees. The central
African rain forest is the second most important area
on earth for capturing carbon dioxide and storing it.”
• Poaching sponsors terror.
Background: Dzanga Bai in the CAR translated as village of the elephants, sees
congregations of forest elephants in their
family groups.
Source: © Kalpesh Lathigra / WWF-UK
Image: Dzanga Bai, translated as village
of the elephants, sees congregations of
elephants in their family groups.
Geo Spatial Technologies as a
Solution in Mitigating Poaching
• Among current and emerging
technologies addressing the crisis:
– DNA tracking (Bio Spatial Tracking),
– UAVs,
– Mobile Devices/Apps
– A slew of other Geo Spatial
Technologies including GIS
• Exploring Geo Spatial Technologies in
the context of a flexible RTM capable
of GIS is the focus of this project.
DNA map (Bio Spatial Technologies)
DNA: Fingerprinting confiscated
stockpiles to their geographic
source(s); identifying poaching hot
spots. Sam Wasser at the UW is
developing cutting edge DNA
tracing technology.
Geo Spatial Technologies as a Solution
in Mitigating Poaching
• UAVs: Drones in tracking wildlife, broadening
surveillance capacity; equipped with cameras
and sensors providing a birds eye view, and
RTM through telemetry updates. Ground stations
can be mobile, equipped with a simple laptop
hosting GPS driven GIS and a communication
system. The result is a dynamically updated
thermal/optical map and corresponding analysis
covering areas of interest.
• Mobile Devices and Apps: Useful in the hands
of rangers and the concerned public; hand held
devices with corresponding (GIS) apps that
permit the recording, reporting and tracking of
wildlife crime.
GIS enabled Drones in Conservation
Source:
http://www.tourismtattler.com/theeconomics-of-the-illegal-wildlife-trade/
A 3 step approach using drone spotter
planes to combat animal poaching.
Limitations in Current GIS in
Monitoring Migratory Species
• Open/closed source, inadequately
supported, incompatible and distributed
components, requiring time consuming
integration and maintenance coupled with
limitations in on-demand real-time analysis
capabilities OR
• High cost, proprietary, integrated GIS
packages closed to source modification
with steep learning curves and also with
limitations in real-time on demand analysis
capabilities.
Need: Well Integrated GIS (and Geo
Spatial Technologies) to Generate more
than Location Maps
• Although Current advances in technologies
have made location based mapping or
visualization through cloud based and non
cloud-based GIS increasingly easier to
achieve there is a need for seamlessly
integrated GIS capable of the rapid
assimilation of spatial data that provides
functionality capable of rich statistical
analysis as well as location based
mapping/visualization in a feasible,
functional and usable manner.
Need: Well Integrated GIS (and Geo
Spatial Technologies) to Generate more
than Location Maps:
need Analysis
Useful in understanding spatiotemporal patterns
and behavior of migratory species, enabling
their conservation.
– Migration (delineating transit corridors) (Pittiglio et
al., 2011; Douglas-Hamilton, Krink & Vollrath,
2005; Osborn & Parker, 2003)
– Home Range and Expansion (Ngene et al. 2010)
– Behaviour (e.g. avoiding landmines in Angola
(EWB); Human-elephant conflict (Sitati, 2003))
– Mitigating Poaching (Maingi et al 2012)
Current Approaches: What’s Wrong with this
Picture? Necessity or Choice?
Source: Wall et al. 2014
Ecological Society of America
Objective: A Boundless Prototype
• Boundless (http://boundlessgeo.com/) formerly
OpenGeo is an Open Source commercial
modularized and complete geospatial platform for
managing data and building maps and
applications that can be integrated with the Rstatistical package.
• The objective is to explore the usability of a
proven, feasible and functional open source
geospatial platform in the context of monitoring
and studying the behavior of highly vulnerable
migratory species; African elephants.
• Boundless will be used to develop a prototype
GIS application that has the potential to be used
in a variety of contexts (cloud based, non-cloud
based, mobile and fixed) for the conservation of
elephants.
Exploring Boundless as an
Alternate GIS Platform for Analysis
and Monitoring Applications: why
Boundless?
• Using the gauging parameters of functionality,
power, costs and control over the package,
Boundless makes the reasonable hypothesis that
the value of a software system to a stakeholder
can be expressed as: V = (F/O) * C
• Where V = Value, F = Functionality and Power, O
= Operational Costs and C = Control.
Exploring Boundless: Value
V = (F/O) * C
V = Value, F = Functionality and Power, O =
Operational Costs and C = Control.
Boundless has been used
and continues to be used
successfully in Federal,
State and International
instances.
http://boundlessgeo.com/
Source: Boundless 2014
Exploring Boundless: Architecture
1.
Storage: Raw data needs to be
managed in a relational database.
OpenGeo Suite uses the PostGIS
spatial database.
2.
Application Server: The raw data
needs to be accessed using web
services, and rendered into
cartographic products. OpenGeo Suite
uses the GeoServer map/feature
server.
3.
Application Cache: Performance
requires the caching of intermediate
results, such as map files. OpenGeo
Suite uses the GeoWebCache tile
cache.
4.
User Interface Framework: Targeted
vertical applications serve one
operational need and serve it well.
OpenGeo Suite uses GeoExt/ExtJS
as a platform independent user
interface toolkit.
5.
User Interface Map Component:
Mapping applications need a map
component that understands spatial
features and map layers. OpenGeo
Suite uses OpenLayers.
Source: Boundless 2014
Exploring Boundless: What about R?
• The R-statistical package can be integrated
with the Boundless OpenGeo Suite through its
component modules and libraries; for this
project we will specifically explore the
integration of the library adehabitat (http://cran.rproject.org/web/packages/adehabitat/index.html)
• The adehabitat library provides four main
components to analyze the spatiotemporal
footprint of animals; management of raster
maps, habitat selection/ecological niche
analysis, home range estimation and analysis
of animals’ trajectories.
Statistical Analysis Capabilities Offered by R's
adehabitat
• Management of Raster Maps: import and export of raster
maps to and from GIS, computing buffers around lines or points, identifying the
value of environmental variables at a given spatial location, counting the number of
points in a pattern in each pixel of a map and more.
• Habitat Selection/Ecological Niche Analysis:
functions allowing the analysis of habitat selection using tracking data, e.g.
compositional analysis, eigenanalysis of selection ratios and K-select analysis.
Statistical methods allowing the analysis of habitat selection available to wildlife
ecologists; factor analysis, selection ratios, the Ecological niche factor analysis, the
Mahalanobis distances and resources selection functions.
• Home Range Estimation: home range estimation methods
using tracking data; Minimum convex polygon, kernel estimation of the utilization
distribution, the cluster home range and the nearest neighbor convex hull.
• Analysis of Animals’ Trajectories: two types of
trajectories are handled, one that does not include a temporal axis, type I, and one
that does, type II. For type II descriptive parameters are automatically computed
(turning angles, distance between successive relocations, mean squared
displacement). Several other functions allow the management and analysis of
trajectories, through these parameters (e.g. test of independent). A new partition
algorithm is also underway which can partition animal trajectories into segments
with homogeneous properties.
Source: CRAN-R Project 2014
Functionality to be Prototyped
through R’s adehabitat
• Home Range Estimation.
• Habitat Preference Estimation.
• Predicting/Understanding behavior or changes
in behavior (of elephants) in the context of
rampant poaching:
– What parameters are needed to understand and
model this phenomena? I will perform a
functionality needs assessment to determine what
spatial and statistical methods will be required.
– Reference to DNA maps, poaching hot spots,
animals abandoning hot spots; use case:
Botswana.
Exploring Boundless: Data
• This project will be using data captured by Project
Field Trip Earth (http://www.fieldtripearth.org/).
These are telemetered data and meta data relayed by
GPS from collared elephants in Cameroon.
• The data are in Excel, XML, KML, CSV and TXT file
formats, and contain the following information:
identity (of the animal and/or the collar), date/time
the data point was received, location (longitude,
latitude) in geographic coordinates and location code
(LC). The location code determines the reliability of
the GPS telemetry data for a given data point.
• Additional contextual, meta and base layer data for
Cameroon and vicinity will be obtained as needed;
http://www.wri.org/our-work/project/congobasin-forest-atlases and http://www.gadm.org/
Architecture used in this Project’s
Instantiation of a Boundless Prototype
Data
Receivers
& APIs
Data
Receivers
& APIs
adehabitat
RESULTS & TIMELINE
• A working prototype.
• A report on the feasibility, functionality and
usability of using Boundless with R for the
conservation of elephants; depending on the
results, the report will include a section on the
scalability of the prototype, accommodating
other migratory species.
• The prototype will be developed within the
next 3 months, to be completed by the end of
January 2015; a presentation about the
project will be made at the SCGIS conference
on July 26-29, 2015 in Monterey, California.
References
EWB (Elephants without Borders) http://www.elephantswithoutborders.org/downloadspapers/elephantslearn.pdf
Douglas-Hamilton, I. (2012) Testimony of Iain DouglasHamilton Founder and CEO, Save the Elephants on Ivory and Insecurity: The Global
Implications of Poaching in Africa before the Committee on Foreign Relations U.S. Senate. 2012.
Douglas-Hamilton, I., S. Bhalla, G. Wittemyer & F. Vollrath (2006) Behavioural reactions of elephants towards a dying and deceased
matriarch. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 100, 87-102.
Douglas-Hamilton, I. & F. Ihwagi (2010) Tracking Animals for Conservation Elephant Tracking Report No. 36.
Douglas-Hamilton, I., Krink, T. & Vollrath, F. (2005) Movements and corridors of African elephants in relation to protected areas.
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George Wittemyer, Joseph M. Northrup, Julian Blanc, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Patrick Omondi, and Kenneth P. Burnham (2014). Illegal killing
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