In the quest to safeguard global biodiversity, offering hands-on access to the planet's ecological data is key, as demonstrated by a recent workshop in South Africa by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center for Biogeochemical Dynamics (ORNL DAAC). Specializing in terrestrial ecology, the ORNL DAAC is tasked with maintaining a collection of data, now including breakthrough biodiversity observations from a campaign aptly named the Biodiversity Survey of the Cape, or BioSCape.
Conducted alongside South African partners, this pioneering research work has managed to gather observations from space, employing airborne imaging spectroscopy and LiDAR—light detection and ranging—together the approach has resulted in an unparalleled dataset covering one of Earth's most plant-diverse regions, the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR), as well as a significant variety of unique marine species.
Michele Thornton, ecologist, and geospatial professional, along with Rupesh Shrestha, remote sensing scientist at ORNL, journeyed to Cape Town to facilitate access to the BioSCape campaign’s dataset, aiding those devoted to conserving our natural world. "There’s nothing that beats personal interaction with users," Thornton said in a statement. Their agenda included practical tutorials on navigating and interpreting the extensive datasets available on the ORNL DAAC's website.
The collaborators in this effort are a testament to global cooperation in the scientific realm, including the South African Environmental Observation Network, the University of Wisconsin Madison, The Nature Conservancy, University of California Merced, University of Cape Town, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and UNESCO, as outlined by ORNL.
