Thank you for a wonderful 2023 SCGIS Conference!!

Nature: From Loss to Sustainable Use

The loss of nature is ubiquitous around the globe–from habitat conversion to harvesting species through illegal or ill-managed activities. Damage inflicted on nature takes many forms. Forests are clearcut to make way for farms. Wildlife species are captured for a price or killed because they are perceived as a threat. Ultimately, the sustainability of landscapes and of human communities and cultures are threatened.

Activities damaging the content and processes of nature set off a complex web of effects in a landscape and around the world. Countless constituencies are affected (positively and negatively) by these activities from local communities, poachers, and farmers to politicians, law enforcement organizations and large industries. In addition, indigenous perspectives are needed to account for the impacts and to effectively design efforts to combat illegal actions and ensure culturally appropriate solutions.

Today geospatial data is being used in many ways to study illicit actions against nature, educate people locally and globally about the impacts, design solutions to prevent future illegal actions, and to promote sustainability and environmental justice.

Are you using geospatial tools to study illicit uses of nature or to create pathways to more sustainable management of natural areas and their many values? Please join our virtual conference and share your stories.

We invite you to attend our plenary sessions to learn what our two outstanding keynote speakers are doing to combat the illicit use of natural areas and their many values.

Keynote Presentations

August 17, 2023 9:30 AM – 11:00 AM PDT

Dr. Meredith Gore is a conservation social scientist. She advances understanding about the human dimensions of global environmental change such as biodiversity loss and climate change. The majority of her research uses risk concepts to explore human-environment interactions and all of her efforts are designed to build evidence for action. Dr. Gore brings an interdisciplinary perspective to a range of conservation issues such as wildlife trafficking, illegal fishing and illegal logging.

Dr. Gore is on the faculty of the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her PhD in Natural Resource Policy and Management from Cornell University, MA in Environment and Resource Policy from George Washington University, and BA in Anthropology and Environmental Studies from Brandeis University. From 2006-2020, she was on the faculty at Michigan State University.

Dr. Gore is an American Geographical Society Council Member, a National Academies of Sciences Jefferson Science Fellow, US Department of State Embassy Science Fellow and Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leader.

Dr. Gore’s Presentation: Interdisciplinary mapping of harmful human-environment relationships and conservation crime

Conservation crime (e.g., wildlife trafficking; illegal logging, mining, fishing) is a transnational socio-environmental challenge globally distributed in scope, scale, and cultural impacts. Conservation crime can simultaneously serve as a vector for zoonotic disease and nonnative species invasion, endanger flora and fauna, undermine returns on sustainable development investment, associate with human rights violations, and support an exploited labor force. Scientific exploration of the causes and consequences of these harmful human-environmental relationships help support more effective decision-making, program evaluation, cross-sectoral partnerships, and funding prioritization. To this end, geographers regularly engage in interdisciplinary research and methods (i.e., different disciplines working together) to advance knowledge. Unfortunately, harmful-human environment relationships persist and by many measures, are getting worse. Multidisciplinary mapping of the spaces that do not fit any existing discipline may offer novel frameworks and methods to help break the logjam and help reduce nature crime This presentation will review 3 case studies of interdisciplinary mapping on illegal logging in Madagascar, wildlife trafficking at a global level, and wildlife poaching in Indonesia, highlighting how minoritized voices, diverse data streams, and fieldwork advance both new answers to existing questions and new questions for future research. Both impatient optimists and hesitant pessimists are invited to engage and discuss implications for geographical sciences.

Become a Sponsor! Please consider becoming an official Sponsor of our 2023 Virtual Conference. Visit our Sponsor information page to learn more.

View the agenda! Check out the 2023 conference agenda of amazing speakers, sessions, and workshops.

Registration Open! The Society for Conservation GIS is excited to announce that registration for our 2023 SCGIS Annual International Conference, taking place August 16-18, is now open! This conference will mark the 26th Anniversary of SCGIS.

To register, please visit our registration page for the conference. Once registered, you will receive instructions on how to join our live conference using the Whova platform on your computer or the Whova app on your mobile device.

Ticket Details: Please note all conference participants need to register for just ONE of the first three tickets for general conference registration (Tier 1, 2 or 3) for access to all conference sessions except workshops. Full price is the Tier 1 ticket for $75. To assist in making the conference affordable to as many as possible, we offer two additional lower cost tickets and simply ask individuals and organizations to pay what they can afford. Tickets to our workshops ($40) are optional (full descriptions below) and have limited seats, so please sign up early if you are interested! Please note that workshops are for conference attendees only. All workshop participants must select a general conference registration (Tier 1, 2 or 3) in order to participate in the conference workshops.

The Society for Conservation GIS only happens because of the generosity of our all-volunteer staff and the donors who have supported us over the years. Funds we raise through the conference make this event possible and support GIS training for our Global Scholarship Program. We strongly encourage all conference participants to become members of SCGIS and/or to make a donation through the last ticket option on our registration page.

If you can not afford to pay to attend our conference, we still want you to participate. Please email conferencequestions@scgis.org to explain your situation and request a free access code for the event.

Ticket Refunds: Please purchase any and all of the tickets that you would like at one time. If you discover later that you want to purchase additional tickets, please contact us at conferencequestions@scgis.org. If you are requesting a refund for a Technical Workshop ticket, please contact us at least 5 days prior to your workshop and we will refund the cost of your ticket.

Questions: Please send questions regarding this conference to conferencequestions@scgis.org

August 16, 2023 9:45 AM – 11:00 AM

Dr. Carlos Klink is a native Brazilian and a professor of Ecology at the University of Brasilia - UnB. He holds B.Sc. in Biology (1981) and M.Sc. in Ecology (1986) from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil, and M.A. (1989) and Ph.D. (1991) in Biology from Harvard University; Dr. Klink was also a visiting scholar at University of Maryland, College Park (2004-2005). He is currently the Chairman of the Dept. of Ecology at UnB.

From 2012 to 2015 Dr. Klink held the position of Brazil´s National Secretary for Climate Change and from January through May 2016, Deputy-Minister of the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment. Dr. Klink has worked for the International Finance Corporation, coordinating the Brazilian Amazon Initiative (2009-2012) and for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) as the Agriculture Team Leader for Brazil (2006-2008) where he coordinated the Conservancy’s strategies on agribusiness and conservation across ecosystems, working with corporations, financial institutions, trade forums, academia and NGOs. Dr. Klink has 37 years of experience working with land-use, climate change, and climate finance, working with corporations, financial institutions, trade forums, governments, academia and NGOs. Dr. Klink has served on the board of government institutions, private sector, NGOs, and international scientific committees. Dr. Klink has published 50+ peer-reviewed papers, 3 books, 100+ technical reports, 150+ technical presentations and conferences, having also worked as a consultant with the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility.

More info on one of Dr. Klink’s current projects https://cerradoinitiative.eco.br/

Dr. Klink’s Presentation: Current and feasible opportunities for reconciling conservation and agribusiness in the Brazilian Cerrado.

The abundant lands in the Cerrado savannas of Brazil and the combination of public policies, technological development, and investments, have transformed the nation into a global agricultural powerhouse. Today, Brazil ranks as one of the world’s leading agribusiness producers and exporters . From 1977 to 2019, agricultural production skyrocketed from 8 million to 130 million tons; national production will possibly reach 309 million tons this year. Yet to maintain Brazil´s global standing to meet the world´s food demand, reduce hunger, and rehabilitate land, a new and ambitious roadmap for production in the Cerrado is needed, one that is rooted also in environmental sustainability.

Cerrado deforestation decreased by over 60% from 2001 and 2018, but habitat conversion is again growing since 2019. Brazil has already proven that soy and beef production can continue to grow even when deforestation is controlled, if technology, policies, and science are correctly deployed. Brazil’s producers and business sectors need to join forces with national and international civil societies, nonprofit organizations, and governments to improve practices to supply the rising demand for soy, beef, timber, and bioenergy.

Key to reaching these objectives are well established public policies, mainly the Brazilian forest code and Brazil´s NDC to the Paris 2015 climate change agreement. The newly elected federal government has defined agriculture and climate change a high priority for public policies. Promoting better coordination of policies that simultaneously conserves ecosystems, promotes sustainable land use and climate change mitigation is therefore a great opportunity for Cerrado conservation.

CONFERENCE WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS

Please note that if you register for one of the Technical Workshops below, you will receive more detailed information about these sessions via email.

Spatial Data with R Part 1: Intro to R for Newbies

Instructor: Andy Lyons

August 14, 8:00AM - 11:00AM, US Pacific Time Zone

R has become a popular and powerful platform for working with GIS data due to its well-developed ability to import and analyze spatial data, strong integration with statistical and visualization libraries, and large user community. Part I of Working with Spatial Data in R will start from the beginning and discuss how R works including basic commands, using packages and functions, scripts, data types, importing tabular and spatial data, and basic plotting. The workshop format will include a mix of slides and hands-on practice.

Prerequisites. No experience with R is required for Part I. That being said, some basic familiarity with R or another programming language like Python will help you comprehend (and remember the material. Introductory tutorials will be recommended in the welcome email.

Software Requirements. This workshop will include a number of short hands-on exercises. To complete the exercises, participants will need a free account on Posit Cloud (formerly known as RStudio Cloud), which allows you to run RStudio in a browser. The instructor will share a RStudio project with everything ready to go. ALL PARTICIPANTS ARE EXPECTED TO HAVE A POSIT CLOUD ACCOUNT BEFORE THE START OF THE WORKSHOP.

Participants who have a compelling need to use RStudio Desktop (i.e., on your laptop) may contact the instructor for setup instructions. The instructor will provide drop-in office hours on Friday August 11 to answer questions, but once the workshop begins there will be no time to troubleshoot setup issues.

Participants are also strongly encouraged to have TWO SCREENS set up (e.g., an external monitor or a 2nd computer), so they can simultaneously view the workshop slides / demo while working in RStudio. This is particularly important for Part 1, where some of the exercises use a “follow me” format.

The workshop will be recorded and shared with participants.

Introduction to LIDAR

Instructors: Dr. Nuria Sanchez

August 14, 1:00PM - 4:00PM, US Pacific Time Zone

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has become one of the most cost-effective remotely sensed data used for forest inventory and analysis. This workshop is designed to provide an understanding on the fundamentals of lidar technology and provide an overview of different systems. The workshop will include an introduction to LiDAR, especially to airborne discrete lidar systems. During the workshop we will explore some lidar datasets and will learn to visualize LAS files with open-source software. Hands-on exercise will focus on analysis to derive outputs such as a digital terrain model, a digital surface model, and canopy height model with open-source software such R and the lidR package. We will also explore options to clip LAS files and extract raster summary metrics from the lidar point clouds that can be used subsequently for modelling different forest attributes such as top height, stand density, etc.

Prerequisites: Basic understanding of R language and familiarity with R studio, and basic GIS and remote sensing concepts are assumed. Most of the exercises will be done in R studio. Detailed instructions and preliminary information will be provided before the workshop, including required R packages and additional information to download the open-source software used for data visualization. Software requirements: R, Fugro Viewer

Spatial Data with R Part 2: Data Processing and Analysis for Conservation

Instructor: Andy Lyons

August 15, 8:00AM - 11:00AM, US Pacific Time Zone

Part II of the Spatial Data in R workshop will cover more advanced manipulations and analyses of spatial data using examples from conservation. Topics will include how R can complement desktop GIS, packages for working with spatial data, importing vector spatial data from local and online sources, common spatial data manipulations including managing projections, working with the attribute table, geoprocessing operations, querying data, joins, and automation. Basic visualization (i.e. mapping) will be presented but not in depth. R packages used will include sf, dplyr, and tmap. Methods for working with raster data will be shown but not in depth. The workshop format will combine short presentations with hands-on exercises using R Notebooks. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a collection of R Notebooks with working code recipes, and be better equipped to develop workflows to tackle new challenges.

Prerequisites. Part II requires basic functionality with R and RStudio. If you are very new to R, and/or very rusty, please take Part I. Familiarity with basic GIS concepts like projections, vector and raster data, attribute tables, etc., is assumed.

Software Requirements. Software requirements are the same as Part 1. All participants are expected to have a free Posit Cloud account so you can run RStudio in a browser. The instructor will provide a link to an RStudio project with all the packages, data, and exercises ready-to-go. Instructions will be provided for anyone with a compelling reason to use RStudio Desktop, but setup support will be limited. Having two screens is highly recommended so you can work in RStudio on one screen and view the slides / demo on the other. The workshop will be recorded and shared with participants.

Comparing Two Field Data Gathering Tools: ArcGIS Survey123 and ArcGIS Field Maps

Instructor: Joseph Kerski

August 15, 9:00AM - 11:00AM, US Pacific Time Zone

Gathering, mapping, analyzing, and communicating the results of field-collected data can be effectively and powerfully accomplished using many modern tools, including ArcGIS Survey123 and ArcGIS Field Maps. Which tools are best for which purpose? Join Geographer and Educator Joseph Kerski as we explore why and how to use these tools, giving you the confidence and ability in your future work to meet your research or instructional goals.

ArcGIS StoryMaps

Instructor: David Asbury

August 15, 1:00PM - 4:00PM, US Pacific Time Zone

Maximize the outreach potential of your conservation work with ArcGIS StoryMaps. Learn how to create rich, interactive, web applications. Prerequisite: none.

Working with ArcGIS Field Maps

Instructor: Miriam Schmidts

August 19, 9:00AM - 12:00PM, US Pacific Time Zone

Prerequisite: Basic familiarity with ArcGIS Online, have the ArcGIS Field Maps app installed on their phone.

ArcGIS Field Maps is a map-centric app for collecting data in the field, finding specific data collection sites and reporting real-time locations. It comes with a smart form that makes attribute entry a lot easier and user friendly. In this workshop we will explore the functionality of ArcGIS Field Maps, set up web layers and web maps for efficient data collection and also learn about common workflows of collecting data with ArcGIS Field Maps.