Available translations: Español

Identifying and mapping individual plants in a highly diverse high-elevation ecosystem using UAV imagery and deep learning

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Volume 169, November 2020, Pages 280-291

Ce Zhang, Peter M.Atkinson, Charles George, Zhaofei Wen, Mauricio Diazgranados, France Gerard

The identification of Páramo plant individuals is essential for environmental monitoring and management. Traditional remote sensing approaches, however, are unsuitable for identifying and mapping individual Páramo plants because they can be very small laterally relative to their height and can be both clustered and highly dispersed.

Recent research in UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and machine learning led by Zhang et al. (2020) has shown great potential and promise in automating the process with high accuracy.

For more details, please refer to: 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2020.09.025 or http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/528910


A concerted research effort to advance the hydrological understanding of tropical páramos

Journal of Hydrological Processes, September 2020

Alicia Correa, Boris F Ochoa‐Tocachi, Christian Birkel, Ana Ochoa‐Sánchez, Charles Zogheib, Carolina Tovar, Wouter Buytaert

Despite the importance of páramos for water security, carbon storage, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services, they are highly vulnerable to human activities. However, just three decades ago, páramos were severely understudied. An increasing awareness of the need for socio-eco-hydrological evidence to guide sustainable management of páramos prompted action for generating data and for filling long‐standing knowledge gaps. This article by Correa et al. (2020) discusses the converging science and policy efforts happening in the páramos, and outlines future research directions for the sustainable long‐term data collection that can foster their responsible conservation.

For more details, please refer to: 

https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13904