Celebrating Earth Day, the High-Tech Way

April 22 marks Earth Day 2006. It's a day when millions of people will celebrate the natural world, many of them teaching children about conservation, taking part in recycling drives and planting trees and flowers. There are countless grass-roots ways in which we can impact our environment.

But there are also many high-tech programs that bring true promise to our natural world. Take, for instance, environmental organizations, government agencies and forward-thinking commercial entities alike that use JMP and other software offerings from SAS to positively impact conservation efforts. SAS customers are measuring the impact of pollution, studying endangered species, working to salvage our fisheries and our forests -– they use the power of analytics to give the world’s ecosystems a second chance.

The following two stories are just a couple of ways in which JMP customers are making Earth-friendly discoveries. First, the USDA controls the spread of nonnative and invasive wildlife within the United States. Then, WildTrack makes it safer for endangered species to live on their own native soil.

How USDA Controls Spread of Invasive Species

Ned Jones, a statistician for the United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, explains that one of his agency's legislative mandates is often to keep nonnative -– and unwanted -– plants and animals out of the country. Giant salvinia, for instance, is a "free-floating fern that has earned a reputation as one of the world's worst aquatic weeds," according to USDA literature. Jones explains that this invasive plant grows so fast that it can take over a pond or small lake in a matter of weeks. "It grows so thick that you could almost walk across the water," he says.

And that spells doom for native plants, fish, insects and other aquatic dwellers that need the sunlight and oxygen that is stolen by the invasive weed. "Giant salvinia creates a canopy that covers the water, killing everything below," says Jones. Because the salvinia has no natural enemies in this country, the answer may be to introduce a biological control: a tiny weevil that is a natural predator to this specific plant.

In the southern reaches of Texas, several USDA tests are underway to see if the Cyrtobagous salviniae weevil is effective in controlling the plant. In the test environments, the weevils and larvae are successfully eating the giant salvinia. And once the salvinia is in check, the weevils die off to allow the formerly infested body of water to once again find a natural balance.

The software is used to know when that natural balance has been achieved. For five test sites, they measured the oxygen content both before and after the weevils were introduced. "We conducted analyses of variants to see if there's a significant differentiation in oxygen," says Jones. The water testing was done with SAS, and then Jones has been using JMP to test the findings.

"We're still conducting research, but the weevil looks like it has potential," says Jones. It has so much potential, in fact, that the USDA has handed over weevil rearing projects to the various states in which salvinia is a problem.

Jones explains that USDA scientists use SAS and JMP for a variety of projects associated with keeping invasive species out of the country and for controlling the spread of those that are already here. JMP, in particular, he says, is used for work that requires visualization of the data.

How WildTrack Monitors Endangered Species

Armed with collections of animal prints, algorithms for a growing number of species and a non-invasive program that is bound to change the way in which often elusive animals are monitored in the wild, WildTrack biologists are working to save endangered species, one step at a time.

Drs. Sky Alibhai and Zoe Jewell know that the censusing and monitoring endangered species is fundamental to wildlife conservation. But having seen the results of traditional monitoring techniques, like radio-collaring, the husband and wife team set out to develop a non-invasive way to learn more about the world’s wild populations. Their answer: The Footprint Identification Technique (FIT), where the ancient art of footprint identification is married with state-of-the-art statistical techniques. Their results: Brilliant.

From their home base in Portugal, the biologists aid conservation projects around the globe. First databases of animal prints are created, usually from known captive animals. "Then we develop algorithms for these species by putting landmark points on each print and feeding the image into the software," says Jewell. "SAS is used for getting the measurements in and JMP is then used for analyzing the data."

In the field, someone takes a digital image of a footprint from one of these species and sends it to the office in Portugal. Once the supplied prints have been compared against the others, Alibhai and Jewell are able to determine if the print belongs to a known animal or if it’s a new subject. "We have found that we can get accuracies of up to 90 percent in terms of being able to assign a particular footprint to the right animal," says Alibhai.

And so the process can be applied to a variety of species. Jewell and Alibhai are currently working with the three endangered Tapir species in Central and South America and the most endangered large cat in the world, the Iberian Lynx, in Spain and Portugal. The prints of wild tigers in India and Bangladesh are being compared to prints collected from 15 known, captive tigers. And thanks to a National Geographic Society grant, the biologists have also taken on two highly endangered rhino populations; the Sumatran rhino in Borneo, and the black rhino in Cameroon.

Results of their work are far-reaching, such as enabling governments to get more accurate counts of animals in their care, helping biologists better understand certain species’ territories and behaviors, and protecting vulnerable populations from poachers. Jewell cites another example: "If objective evidence is produced from footprint images that Iberian lynx exist in Portugal (where they are suspected to be), this will help strengthen the case for the protection of their habitat, currently under imminent threat from development."

The biological control: Cyrtobagous salviniae weevil. Photo courtesy of USDA.

Additional Links

www.usda.gov

www.wildtrack.org