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Copyright 2006 - UNESCO

Space for Heritage

Satellite Imagery - Decision Support Tool for Gorilla Conservation 

Mother and child Mountain Gorillas, Congo (Dem.Rep.)
© M.Graye, IGCP
The habitat of the Mountain Gorilla is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda. The region, renowned for the diversity of its natural habitats and for the incredible wealth of wildlife, includes the World Heritage sites of Virunga National Park and Kahuzi-Biega National Park in DRC as well as Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in Uganda.

The habitat of the Mountain Gorillas is one of the geographical areas where the use of remote sensing is both essential and challenging. The geographical area is large. The terrain is mountainous and difficult to access, including some of Africa’s highest peaks reaching over 5 000 m. in altitude. Also, the long conflict from which the region is emerging has left painful rifts in the social, economic and ecological fabric. Both conflict and the size of some of the protected areas, mean that only space technologies offer a solution to the problems of making overall environmental assessments.
Congo (Dem.Rep), Rwanda, Uganda
Land use and change map of Mountain Gorilla habitat
© LANDSAT, NASA
For the very first time, accurate basic cartographic products for the whole habitat have been produced, derived from satellite imagery. These include elevation models, vegetation and land use change maps, as well as 1:200 000 and 1:50 000 cartography.
A comparison of the satellite images taken over the sites between 1990 and 2003 has provided an accurate picture of the impacts on the environment caused by the large period of political unrest which resulted in the arrival of refugees, deforestation, the creation of new human settlements and, in some cases, forest regeneration.
Measuring points with a GPS, Congo (Dem.Rep.)
© UNESCO
The products, which are compatible with geo-positioning systems, allow national conservation authorities to track the gorillas and all flora and fauna and to monitor any changes or degradation to their habitat.
National conservation agencies assisted by a series of non-governmental organizations working in and around the parks can now identify the park boundaries, map their observations with respect to flora and fauna surveys, visualize movements of the fauna, and plan out gorilla-associated eco-tourism.

Extracting Additional Features to Improve Cartography

Salonga NP, Congo (Dem.Rep.)
space technology to detect river networks
© CSA - RADARSAT-1
As a partner of UNESCO in the ‘Open Initiative’, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) assists UNESCO among other projects, with the associated coverage of RADARSAT images for UNESCO’s activities in Central Africa.
RADARSAT-1 is a sophisticated Earth Observation (EO) System to monitor environmental change and the planet’s natural resources. Equipped with a powerful Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument, RADARSAT acquires images of the Earth day or night, in all weather and through cloud cover, smoke and haze.
The results further confirm that optical satellite images are not enough when working in tropical areas. The added value of radar enables to extract additional features: river network, borders of the parks, deforested areas, etc.; and in some cases radar can detect human induced vegetation.
VIDEO
 Click on the arrow below to launch the video made thanks to satellite images: Flight over the National Park of the Volcanoes (Congo) - 47''
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