Conservation GIS Lab

Exploring Opportunities to Balance Economic and Conservation Benefits of San Antonio de los Lagos Natural Preserve, Colombia

Partner: San Antonio de los Lagos Natural Preserve, Enrique Sanchez-Rivera (W&M MBA ‘07)

San Antonio de los Lagos Natural Preserve in Colombia supports important biodiversity and natural resources and supports sustainable agricultural productivity, yet there is a need to conduct baseline assessments of the biodiversity and ecosystem processes in the Preserve to ensure that it continues to balance its economic and conservation value. W&M students will work with the San Antonio de los Lagos Natural Preserve team to conduct a land cover map to explore landscape patterns needed to conserve biodiversity, promote sustainable agriculture, and enhance the livelihoods in this important area of Colombia. 

Developing a Story Map to Engage Communities in the Identification of Scenic Viewsheds in Virginia

Partner: Scenic Virginia 

Scenic viewsheds have aesthetic value for local communities. Preserving viewsheds protects this value and also protects biodiversity and ecosystem services. Scenic Virginia works with partners to map and protect Virginia's important viewsheds facing rapid development and secure the benefits they provide us all.  

Using a tested protocol developed by IIC students in 2023/2024, one to two W&M students will work with Scenic Virginia to improve and automate GIS protocols for mapping viewsheds. 

Students will explore questions about processes for including vegetation and DEM layers in the viewsheds, how to define and capture views (understanding scale), and how to standardize and capture the unique features of each scenic viewshed. Students will complete viewshed mapping for the Friends of the Lower Appomattox River (FOLAR) community engagement effort. This will provide an introduction to case studies that explore improved mapping methods. The project will produce a story map that enhances viewer engagement and raises awareness about scenic viewsheds. The project will include a protocol for submitting, retrieving, and downloading the viewshed.

Developing Interactive Interpretation for Virginia State Parks that Engages Audiences in Meaningful Conservation 

Partner: Virginia State Parks 

Virginia State Parks (VSP) aims to engage visitors in fun, interactive, and accurate interpretation that inspires audiences to support and participate in VSP’s mission to conserve Virginia's important ecosystems.  

A team of W&M students will support a new VSP initiative that blends the expertise from their Resource Management Team and the Visitor Management Team to develop scientifically accurate and engaging interpretations for their audiences, starting with First Landing State Park. Students will interview the various teams to understand the information and actions the Park would like guests to adopt and best practices for sharing information with park visitors.  

The students will conduct a literature review on interpretive material impacts, best practices, and behavior change strategies in parks, and they will explore media and tools potentially fit for engagement (e.g. virtual reality, story maps, etc.). The student team will use this information to propose an engaging and fun new interpretive tool at First Landing State Park. Student activities will include visits to the park, the development of interpretive materials, and testing the materials with park visitors. The student team will present their proposal and final deliverable to VSP.

Temporal changes in Characteristics of Chukchi and Beaufort Sea Coastal Lagoons and Effects on Water Chemistry, Fish Assemblages, and Subsistence Harvest Activities

Partner: Wildlife Conservation Society

Chukchi and Beaufort Sea coastal lagoons are important habitats for unique assemblages of fishes, birds, and marine mammals. Many of these animals are vital to the food security of rural and Indigenous residents of the region.  

Climate change and impacts from human activities such as construction cause coastal erosion, warming waters, and increased storm frequency, impact coastal Arctic habitats. These changes disrupt human access to resources, weaken ecosystem resiliency, and threaten the sustainability of fish stocks. Identifying changes in habitat characteristics and how they influence fish ecology will increase accuracy in prediction of fish abundance and availability amidst threats, and may help illuminate strategies for responding to negative impacts.   

Further study is needed at a wider spatial scale to clearly establish changes to the physical layout, freshwater input, ocean connectivity, and ice-free season length of coastal Arctic lagoons and the potential effects on fishes, other animals that occupy these habitats, and subsistence harvesters that utilize them. 

In the GIS lab, students will use Sentinel-2 and other available sources of daily-weekly temporal resolution satellite imagery from 2016-2024 to 1) Characterize Chukchi and Beaufort Sea coastal lagoon frequency of marine connectivity and duration of connectivity, 2) Identify and/or quantify changes in lagoon surface area and location of marine connection over time, and 3) Identify ice-free season length. Additionally, students will measure freshwater input to lagoons. Results will be analyzed and summarized in the context of climate change, available lagoon water chemistry, fish assemblage structure data, and access to lagoons for rural and Indigenous subsistence harvesters.  

Mapping Land Uses and Land Use Change in the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary to Support Community Conservation Efforts

Partner: Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary and Dr. Enoch Gyamfi-Ampadu, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology 

The Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary is found in the Nkoranza North District of the Brong East Region, Ghana. The sanctuary protects forest covering an estimated area of 4.5 km² and serves as a habitat for Mona and the Black and White Colobus monkeys that co-exist with the community members.

To improve and support the Sanctuary’s conservation, students in the lab will use remote sensing and GIS modeling to map the forest, communities, and other adjacent land uses in order to ascertain the spatial and temporal changes, their distributions, as well as the transitions among them to inform conservation and management of the sanctuaries. 

Using Growing Degree Day Calculations to Predict Flight Times of Rare Butterflies and Skippers 

Partner: Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation

In the face of climate-driven ecological changes, there is a need for wildlife and natural resource managers to monitor and predict changes to adapt their strategies. The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (VCR) monitors pollinator-plant interactions and phenology across Virginia to guide invasive species management and native plant and pollinator conservation efforts. A key part of this effort is monitoring the timing that pollinators emerge each season and the linkage to the timing flowering plants bloom. With increasing temperatures and shifts in precipitation and seasonal warming, there is a need for managers to predict the shifts in phenology to plan their management and conservation efforts.  

Building off of a project started in Spring 2024, a student will help create a predictive tool using GIS for VCR to predict and track the timing of pollinator phenology. 

Identifying Successes and Gaps in Meeting the 30 x 30 Goal for North America

Partner: IUCN North America 

To achieve the U.S. national 30 x 30 conservation goal to protect 30% of our environment by 2030, there is a need for common definitions and coordination to assess which lands and waters are most essential to protect, restore, and connect.

Working with mentors from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) North America, W&M students will use the new American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas to explore how to combine biodiversity targets, environmental justice goals, and socio-cultural and economic priorities to identify high-priority conservation areas.

Students will explore patterns in the data, who has been involved in the definition of and will be impacted by the biodiversity prioritization, and how to best combine available datasets to maximize shared priorities in order to meet the 30x30 goal.

A Spatial Analysis for Ecosystem-based Adaptation in Nepal's Freshwater Ecosystems

Partner: World Wildlife Fund 

Healthy ecosystems provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including their ability to shield human populations from climate impacts such as storm surges. To effectively design long-term adaptation solutions, it is essential to have a deep understanding of the interlinkages, dependencies, and interactions within ecosystems.  

Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) has emerged as a concept that harnesses the solutions found in nature to address climate change challenges. Eba has gained traction across governmental and non-governmental organizations.  

This project adopts a sustainable and science-based approach to freshwater restoration in Nepal. The project explores impact pathways for EbA in Nepal's freshwater ecosystems, which have been significantly affected by climate change-induced issues like water pollution, habitat degradation, and loss of biodiversity.

The project will utilize a comprehensive methodology that integrates various spatial data, including hydrological information, land use patterns, water quality parameters, and biodiversity indices. The analysis will generate a restoration zone, serving as a valuable decision-making tool for ecosystem-based adaptation work in Nepal. This spatially explicit framework will provide guidance for implementing restoration activities, monitoring progress, and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions over time. 

Creating a Global Shescape

Partner: Women in Water Diplomacy Network 

Women are disproportionately underrepresented in water and climate negotiations and decision making and at the same time are disproportionate impacted by water management and climate change.

The Women in Water Diplomacy Network is a community of practice comprised of both formal and informal women decision-makers and experts, representing a wealth of collective experience and expertise in transboundary water management and decision-making engaged in some of the most water insecure regions of the world. Originating in the Nile Basin in 2017, the Network is now a global community of women water leaders (and male champions supporting gender equality) working collectively to strengthen women’s leadership in transboundary water decision-making, with support from several environmental organizations including the Environmental Law Institute (ELI).

In this project W&M students will work collaboratively with ELI and Network representatives to create an online Shescape, or digital stakeholder map, of leading women water diplomats engaged collectively across a basin and in the Network.

Through the development of this watershed-based Shescape, the students will develop a supportive tool which the Network can continue to develop and maintain independently as the Network continues to grow. This project draws upon the experience on two previous Conservation GIS Lab projects, a Shescape of the Colorado Watershed developed in partnership with Planet Women, and a global, interactive Shescape tool for women leaders in South Africa to identify opportunities for collaboration and support, developed in partnership with Dr. Mvusy Songelwa.

Understanding and Monitoring the Impact of Sustainable Rangeland Management in Africa

Partner: Conservation International 

Africa Rangeland Watch (ARW), a web-based monitoring tool, will support communities, decision-makers, land managers, and other interested stakeholders in tracking, planning, and monitoring rangeland health and condition at scale. The platform empowers users to quantify land-use and climate impacts on rangelands over time, based on earth observation satellite imagery supplemented by ground-based rangeland monitoring. In its current form, ARW is powered by Google Earth Engine (GEE) and runs as a Google Earth Engine Application. Drawing from the vast satellite image and public data repository of GEE via the code editor (Python, JavaScript) functionality, ARW has been developed to a point where it is ready to be developed to scale. There are three main methods of analysis that ARW is built to perform, those being baseline, temporal, and spatial analysis methods.  

This project seeks to build on the current metrics and methodologies for quantifying change across African Rangeland restoration sites and refine targeted indicators that are most suitable for measuring the success of Conservation International's continental rangeland restoration program.

Using Citizen Science to Map Invasive Species on W&M Campus

Partner: Tracy Melton

Invasive species have negative ecological and socioeconomic impacts and are spreading rapidly. Mitigating their impact requires an understanding of their distribution, yet it is often difficult to collect enough data at spatial and temporal scales needed to design effective management strategies.  

A team of W&M students will explore existing tools used to support citizen science mapping of invasive species and determine the best tool for understanding and mitigating invasive species on the W&M campus. This tool will potentially have broader application in Virginia. 

Mapping Potential Arrival Locations for Invasive Toads in Madagascar

Partner: Madagascar Flora and Fauna Group

The recent discovery of an invasive population of Asian common toads (Duttaphrynus melanostictus) on the eastern coast of Madagascar – one of the world's most diverse and most threatened biodiversity hotspots – raised concerns about potential ecological and socioeconomic impacts. Madagascar Flora and Fauna Group (MFG) has identified at least ten sea and river ports along the east coast of Madagascar considered to be at high risk of toad invasion due to the significant boat traffic arriving at these ports from within the toad incursion.

W&M students will use remote sensing and raster data, along with existing field data containing toad densities and habitat use across various habitat types, to identify the areas near these potential invasion points that toads are most likely to use when they first arrive. Students will identify waterbodies, swamps, rural farmlands, and other areas toads are most likely to utilize near these invasion points. MFG technicians on the ground will focus search efforts in these areas to better allocate limited resources and increase chances of finding stowaway toads before they can establish a breeding population.

Quantifying Spatially Explicit Species-Habitat Relationships of Sandhill Crane in the Platte River Valley

Partner: US Fish and Wildlife Service

The use of remote sensing in aerial wildlife surveys is a relatively new technique that results in spatially-explicit datasets over broad geographies. Although the primary goal of these datasets is often to estimate population sizes of species, the characteristics of the data provide an ideal opportunity to better understand species-habitat relationships and the effect management on species’ distributions.  

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) annually conducts low-level, aerial surveys of sandhill crane during the daytime when they are foraging.  In partnership with William & Mary, the USFWS Division of Migratory Bird Management, W&M students have developed a fully functioning deep learning workflow and model that results in geospatial data on the abundance and distribution of roosting sandhill cranes at a critical migratory stopover site. The dataset is also expected to grow with a second year of data in the spring of 2025.  

A new team of W&M students will collect geospatial environmental data informed by the expertise of biologists and managers and will synthesize abundance and location data on sandhill cranes to develop statistical models to quantify species-habitat relationships of sandhill crane. These data, and the derived species-habitat relationships, will contribute towards an improved understanding of the ecology, habitat associations, and management of the species.