NASA gives chimps a helping hand with satellite analysis of their habitats

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NASA has released satellite images showing the impact of deforestation in the region around Gombe National Park in Tanzania.

NASA collaborated with the US Geological Survey (USGS) to capture the images with the Landsat satellite in an effort to help conserve chimpanzees, which are an endangered species. 

There are approximately 345,000 or fewer chimps left in the wild and are classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 

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NASA and the US Geological Survey have released a series of satellite images showing the impact of deforestation in the region around Gombe National Park in Tanzania.

Chimpanzees in the region used to live in an uninterrupted belt of forest and woodlands from Lake Tanganyika westward through Uganda and the Congo Basin to western Africa. 

It was in the early 1970s, 10 or so years after Dr Jane Goodall, a famous British primatologist, first arrived in the region and began observing chimpanzees, that forest began to be cut down.  

Satellite images comparing forest cover in 1972 (right) and 1999 (left) in the region around Gombe National Park, Tanzania. A population explosion and poverty have led to the forest being cleared for agriculture, local logging and charcoal production

'Today the belt per se has gone because it's being divided into increasingly small fragments,' said Dr Jane Goodall, 82, who is still involved in conservation efforts at her namesake institute. 

Increased pressures on the land due to a population explosion and poverty have led to the forest being cleared for agriculture and local logging as well as charcoal production.

But NASA, the USGS and the Jane Goodall Institute have collaborated in an effort to conserve the chimps and the forest. 

'When deforestation happens, important ecological functions and services are lost - impacting both chimps and people. The chimpanzees lose feeding and nesting grounds, and it is very difficult for the territorial animals to shift their home range to another location,' said Dr Lilian Pintea, the vice president of conservation science for the Jane Goodall Institute

Dr Lilian Pintea, the vice president of conservation science for the Jane Goodall Institute, said: 'When we first got our landsat satellite images from '72 and '99, we made a natural color composite of Gombe and the area outside Gombe and put them side-by-side and realized that lots of deforestation happened.

'You can see it, the villages lost maybe 90 per cent to 80 per cent of the forest cover.

'And they (the villagers) will tell stories about how the hills were covered in forest. 

This image shows the difference in the forest cover between the region within the Gombe National Park (left of the red boundary line) and the regions outside of the park to the right

'But then when you show them a picture, it's very shocking to everybody, realizing what has been lost.

'When deforestation happens, important ecological functions and services are lost - impacting both chimps and people. 

It was in the early 1970s, 10 or so years after Dr Jane Goodall, a famous British primatologist, first arrived in the region and began observing chimpanzees, that forest began to be cut down

'The chimpanzees lose feeding and nesting grounds, and it is very difficult for the territorial animals to shift their home range to another location.

'People lose local forest resources like honey or specific valuable tree species, as well as suffer alterations of the local water cycle that make erosion and flash flooding new problems.'

Villagers were motivated to find new ways to sustainably manage their land and to protect the health of the areas.

The Jane Goodall institute and communities started a forest monitoring program to provide training and equip community members with GPS-enabled devices to document forest activities.

Together with the institute, villages developed land use plans for mapping where to build homes, what areas could support agriculture, and where it was best to harvest the forest sustainably. 

Dr Goodall said: 'It was really really exciting to see the impacts of these images on the villagers.

'And to see them sitting around and identifying sacred places, and that enabled them to do these land use management plans, and that's made all the difference.' 

According to NASA, tree cover is returning, and Earth observations are now being used to show progress and inspire continued action.

This helps protect soil needed for agriculture and clean drinking water, and safeguards forest health. 

It also ensures the long-term survival of Gombe's famous chimpanzees and those across western Tanzania. 

Dr Goodall said: 'I think that there's no question but that NASA with its satellite imagery used in the right way, it can be really helpful for conservation.

'We cannot do this project if the Landsat program doesn’t deliver this open data to the scientific community,' Dr Pintea said.

Dr Pintea said that NASA and the USGS's open data policy and research funding support has allowed him and other scientists to build a satellite-based decision support system for monitoring habitat health not only in Gombe but for the entire chimpanzee range in Africa, he said.

'We are benefiting from these long-term investments now.'