What do conservation practitioners want from remote sensing?

10. Remote sensing might be used to measure fishing effort in areas where illicit fishing has
negative impacts on biodiversity. It might be difficult to count fishing boats themselves over
large enough areas from satellite data but perhaps the cloud trails induced by their exhaust
gases or trawl tracks in shallow seas could be used.
11. Remote sensing might be more widely used to quantify conservation impacts of river flows and
their seasonal pattern and sediment discharges. This is relevant to floodplain wetland
conservation and estuaries and deltas. Remote sensing-based measure of river flows might be
compared with and calibrated using long-term global databases of river flows from direct
gauging.
12. Remote sensing could be more widely used to quantify the drivers of loss of natural habitats.
Changes from natural habitat to plantation, agricultural or urban, cropland to pasture or
abandoned land, desertification and regeneration of forest and other habitats on abandoned
land need to be available in more detail. Remote sensing surveillance of the development of
road networks is also in this category.
13. Remote sensing-based habitat inventories for classes of land designated by governments as
priorities for development, agricultural conversion and plantation, such as “degraded land”
would be valuable.
Some more detailed suggestions related to these headings have been contributed by participants after
the meeting and will be used by the champions group.
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