Indonesia's Forest Moratorium: Impacts and Next Steps

The authors identify opportunities for progress with the recently extended Indonesian forest moratorium, a policy aiming to protect an area the size of Japan from development

Global-Scale Resource Survey and Performance Monitoring of Public OGC Web Map Services

One of the most widely-implemented service standards provided by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to the user community is the Web Map Service (WMS). WMS is widely employed globally, but there is limited knowledge of the global distribution, adoption status or the service quality of these online WMS resources. To fill this void, we investigated global WMSs resources and performed distributed performance monitoring of these services. This paper explicates a distributed monitoring framework that was used to monitor 46,296 WMSs continuously for over one year and a crawling method to discover these WMSs. We analyzed server locations, provider types, themes, the spatiotemporal coverage of map layers and the service versions for 41,703 valid WMSs. Furthermore, we appraised the stability and performance of basic operations for 1210 selected WMSs (i.e., GetCapabilities and GetMap). We discuss the major reasons for request errors and performance issues, as well as the relationship between service response times and the spatiotemporal distribution of client monitoring sites. This paper will help service providers, end users and developers of standards to grasp the status of global WMS resources, as well as to understand the adoption status of OGC standards. The conclusions drawn in this paper can benefit geospatial resource discovery, service performance evaluation and guide service performance improvements.Comment: 24 pages; 15 figure

Understanding citizen science and environmental monitoring: final report on behalf of UK Environmental Observation Framework

Citizen science can broadly be defined as the involvement of volunteers in science. Over the past decade there has been a rapid increase in the number of citizen science initiatives. The breadth of environmental-based citizen science is immense. Citizen scientists have surveyed for and monitored a broad range of taxa, and also contributed data on weather and habitats reflecting an increase in engagement with a diverse range of observational science. Citizen science has taken many varied approaches from citizen-led (co-created) projects with local community groups to, more commonly, scientist-led mass participation initiatives that are open to all sectors of society. Citizen science provides an indispensable means of combining environmental research with environmental education and wildlife recording. Here we provide a synthesis of extant citizen science projects using a novel cross-cutting approach to objectively assess understanding of citizen science and environmental monitoring including: 1. Brief overview of knowledge on the motivations of volunteers. 2. Semi-systematic review of environmental citizen science projects in order to understand the variety of extant citizen science projects. 3. Collation of detailed case studies on a selection of projects to complement the semi-systematic review. 4. Structured interviews with users of citizen science and environmental monitoring data focussing on policy, in order to more fully understand how citizen science can fit into policy needs. 5. Review of technology in citizen science and an exploration of future opportunities

Global Impacts Report 2017

Our fifth Global Impacts Report reflects on the progress of the MSC over the past 20 years, examines the sustainability performance of certified fisheries around the world and highlights areas of future interest

Using whole body technologies to map the mobility of older adults

In this paper we describe the preliminary findings of two-year study that attempted to map the mobility of our oldest citizens using activity monitoring and location-aware technologies. We recruited a group of 100 adults aged between 72 and 92 years old, drawn from a 25 year longitudinal cohort, and collected lifestyle, nutrition, health and social engagement data. We also fitted a subset of the group with accelerometers and location-based tracking devices and asked them to wear these for a week in order that we could generate accurate, live mobility data and assess these data against self-reports. We are now using this data to describe the relationship between mobility, activity and physical and mental well-being, but in this preliminary paper, we outline some of the main challenges we encountered when trying to use these ‘whole body’ technologies to determine mobility

An open-access platform for camera-trapping data

In southern Mexico, local communities have been playing important roles in the design and collection of wildlife data through camera-trapping in community-based monitoring of biodiversity projects. However, the methods used to store the data have limited their use in matters of decision-making and research. Thus, we present the Platform for Community-based Monitoring of Biodiversity (PCMB), a repository, which allows storage, visualization, and downloading of photographs captured by community-based monitoring of biodiversity projects in protected areas of southern Mexico. The platform was developed using agile software development with extensive interaction between computer scientists and biologists. System development included gathering data, design, built, database and attributes creation, and quality control. The PCMB currently contains 28,180 images of 6478 animals (69.4% mammals and 30.3% birds). Of the 32 species of mammals recorded in 18 PA since 2012, approximately a quarter of all photographs were of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Platforms permitting access to camera-trapping data are a valuable step in opening access to data of biodiversity; the PCMB is a practical new tool for wildlife management and research with data generated through local participation. Thus, this work encourages research on the data generated through the community-based monitoring of biodiversity projects in protected areas, to provide an important information infrastructure for effective management and conservation of wildlife