B070-03
Biodiversity Survey of the Cape ( BioSCape )

Friday, 11 December 2020: 16:08
Virtual
Adam Wilson, University at Buffalo, Geography, Buffalo, NY, United States, Erin Lee Hestir, University of California, Merced, Merced, CA, United States, William W Turner, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, DC, United States, Henry Frye, University of Connecticut, Groton, CT, United States, Jasper Slingsby, South African Environmental Observation Network, Cape Town, South Africa, Cory Merow, University of Connecticut, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Storrs, CT, United States, Keith Gaddis, NASA Headquarters, Biodiversity and Eco Forecasting Program, Washington, DC, United States, Amy Frazier, Arizona State University, Spatial Analysis Research Center (SPARC), Tempe, AZ, United States and Efthymios Ioannis Nikolopoulos, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
A recent report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is clear: with over a million species threatened with extinction, we are at a tipping point for biodiversity. Biodiversity loss is both a symptom and a driver of global change. Thus, detecting, understanding, and forecasting biodiversity are vital for combating contemporary loss and preventing future extinctions. This ability is especially needed within regions characterized as hotspots for biodiversity and environmental vulnerability. Mediterranean-type climate regions have already experienced significant climatic change, and climate models predict these trends will continue. In South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR), the challenge is compounded by ecological feedbacks between hydrology, fire, and pressures from human populations. The GCFR has the richest temperate flora and the third-highest marine endemism in the world, containing two Global Biodiversity Hotspots, and has already experienced climate-driven changes in biodiversity. We introduce a field campaign under development with NASA that is focused on biodiversity and ecosystem forecasting in the GCFR. The campaign is organized around three major themes aimed at understanding: 1) the distribution and abundance of biodiversity, 2) the role of biodiversity in ecosystem function, and 3) the impacts of biodiversity change on ecosystem services. This focus represents an important paradigm shift from previous NASA field campaigns, which were primarily biogeochemical, toward an approach for measuring and understanding functional, phylogenetic, and taxonomic biological diversity as key components of ecosystem function. The field campaign includes collection of new hyperspectral imagery from AVIRIS-NG, PRISM, and HyTES spectrometers combined with the LVIS laser altimeter aboard the NASA GIII and GV aircraft. The field campaign is designed to improve our understanding of the drivers and mechanisms of ecological change, feedbacks between biodiversity and regional climate variability, anthropogenic and natural disturbance, post-fire recovery, freshwater provisioning, and other ecosystem services.
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