Supporting Elephant Conservation in Sri Lanka through MODIS imagery

[ABSTRACT]The latest government sponsored national elephant survey was conducted in Sri Lanka in 2011, revealing the number as 5,879. This is about 10% of the total elephant population of the sub-continent. The forest cover, the living environment of these elephants in Sri Lanka is about 19,500 sq km (2012 estimation). With a very high human population density of the island (332 people per sq km, 2010), the pressure for land to feed people and elephants is becoming critical, putting the lives of both sides at risk in rural areas. Resent reports indicated about 250 elephants are killed annually by farmers in man-elephant conflicts. Apart from various local level remedies for this issue, this study suggests the conservation of elephant population can be supported by remote sensing imagery based studies. Freely available MO DIS sensor imagery can be considered as a successful candidate for the purpose. The advantage of spatial resolution ofMODIS image (250m x 250m) to automatically filter out very small forest patches in the mapping process. Also, the daily receiving of imagery helps to monitor micro-level temporal green area changes, which helps to understand possible local level movements of elephants. However, the coarse image resolution is not capable to delineate finer boundaries between forest and settlements and farmlands. This study used MODIS 250m imagery to map Sri Lanka's forest cover (2012) and examined the possibility to identify sizeable forest patches that elephants can roam. Finer resolution images available in Google Earth were used to examine the accuracy and structure of forest- rural village-farm environment. In future study steps, actual elephant movement information will be gathered from local authorities and existing and potential bio-corridors will be tried to identify. Furthermore, monthly green area change maps and field investigations can be produced to gain a better understanding of elephant movements. Such information will provide a very influential source of data for wild elephant conservation of Sri Lanka.

https://opac.ll.chiba-u.jp/da/curator/107421/

https://opac.ll.chiba-u.jp/da/curator/107421/ceresIntlSympo-18-P036.pdf

Chiba University. Center for Environmental Remote Sensing

千葉大学環境リモートセンシング研究センター

会議発表用資料

Proceedings of the CEReS international symposium = CEReS国際シンポジウム資料集

18

36

44

2012-10-24

publisher

環境リモートセンシング研究センター「CEReSシンポジウム資料集」