Our Technology

The rise in landscape ecology over the last decade has driven advances in computer and satellite technology.  Today, WCS field biologists can determine their position within 20 yards using Global Positioning Systems (GPS), locate themselves on new acquired satellite images from NASA (called remote sensing), and compare their position, forest boundaries and human land uses on computerized maps using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).   These tools allow scientists and conservationists to conduct detailed studies over time and large areas to better understand how to save wildlife and wild places.  Moreover GIS techniques can persuasively show how human activity impacts wildlife in ways that most people can understand and appreciate.  For example, by plotting locations where a certain species occurs in a given area, biologists can show which areas should be protected, or which human land uses are conflicting with what species need.  Through science and maps, conservation biologists and local people can come to understand what a species needs within its landscape and how that landscape depends on the species.

WCS operates a Geographic Information and Analysis facility at its Bronx Zoo headquarters to assist field staff with landscape ecology.  Our program collaborates with WCS field scientists from around the world wherever landscape ecology can make our conservation work more effective.  WCS has used GIS/GPS and remote sensing tools to plan range wide priorities for tigers in Asia and jaguars in Latin America, to study the possibility of natural wolf recolonization in the northeast U.S., to study mandrill movements in Gabon, and to measure the rate of deforestation in Indoneisa.  The Landscape Ecology Program also provides training workshops in GIS technology twice a year to WCS field biologists from Cambodia, Kenya, Guatemala, China, Rwanda, Colombia and many other countries around the world.  Through these activities and regular consultation on conservation planning, the Landscape Ecology Program seeks to integrate the theory of landscape ecology in to the practice of conservation at WCS.