Wildlife Habitat Mapping
Using Local Expertise for Habitat Data
Our Partnership
Wildlife habitat data is essential for conservation-based decision making. With that in mind, we worked to explore the potential of using volunteered geographic information (VGI) to gather insight into wildlife living habits. Working in collaboration with scholars from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, along with other academic and community partners, we gathered the research and ingenuity necessary to generate crucial data for conservation efforts.
About DU Research
We leverage cross-institutional collaboration to address some of today’s most pressing challenges, producing interdisciplinary solutions that influence policymakers to effectively serve the public good. From Stanford to UChicago to NYU, we’ve refined our collaborative process through years of mutually beneficial relationships with institutions nationwide to understand and address challenges like climate change, HIV and youth homelessness.
DU’s current research efforts have been featured in news outlets like The New York Times. They include…
- exploring the effects of felony disenfranchisement.
- employing lasers as the medium for quantum science.
- using theatre to heal and rehabilitate inmates.
About the Project
With wildlife habitat mapping as such a crucial component of many conservation-related decisions, it was essential that we worked to get the most accurate information possible. To that end, we worked to explore the use of VGI as part of that process. An area's locals often encounter wildlife on a daily basis, and those sightings, along with those recorded by nature reserve administrations, helped form a basis for developing comprehensive habitat data.
While these types of sightings can suffer from shortcomings in accuracy caused by issues like spatial bias and positional uncertainty, we believe that integrating this data helped overcome these issues.
Our initial case study took place in Yunnan, China, where we mapped habitat suitability for the black-and-white snub-nosed monkey based on these methods.