Scientists from the U.S. and South Africa are launching a campaign to map marine, freshwater and terrestrial species and ecosystems in one of Earth’s biodiversity hotspots: the Greater Cape Floristic Region at the southwestern edge of South Africa.

NASA will fly planes over the area for six weeks in 2023 to measure the height and structure of vegetation and collect ultraviolet, visual, thermal and other imagery across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Satellites will gather additional data. Teams on the ground will make observations at locations of particular interest, logging plants and, possibly, animals they detect.

Using these data, the team will map the region’s biodiversity, providing estimates of the distribution and abundance of species and the boundaries of ecosystems, and researching how biodiversity impacts the physical environment and vice versa. In other words, the campaign will help scientists understand the structure, function and composition of ecosystems in the study area.

“This is a broad collaboration between several organisations,” says Adam Wilson, PhD, principal investigator and a biogeographer at the University at Buffalo (UB). “The Greater Cape Floristic Region is a really fascinating place — it has extremely high plant diversity, and there’s been dramatic environmental change over the last 50 years, due to both climate and land use change.

“Our data will capture this region’s biodiversity in greater detail than ever before from a plane or satellite. In combination with the field observations, these new data will help us understand this dynamic region and improve our ability to monitor biodiversity from space globally.”

Detecting changes in the state of Fynbos ecosystems

The project — titled, “Marine, Freshwater and Terrestrial Biodiversity Survey of the Cape (BioSCape)” — is funded by NASA, with UB researchers receiving $873 000 in NASA funding to complete their share of the work.

The leadership team includes Wilson, associate professor of geography in the UB College of Arts and Sciences; Erin Hestir, PhD, at the University of California (UC), Merced; Jasper Slingsby, PhD, at the University of Cape Town; and Glenn Moncrieff, PhD, at the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON). Other institutional partners include the South African National Biodiversity Institute, South African National Parks, CapeNature Provincial Parks and the South African National Space Agency. Slingsby was still working at SAEON when the proposal was developed and agreed.

Slingsby, lecturer at the University of Cape Town, adds, “The BioSCape campaign really is a great opportunity, not only for boosting the use of remote sensing in the region, but for driving innovation in remote sensing of biodiversity in general. The shrubland ecosystems in the region are hyperdiverse and have complex spatial and temporal natural dynamics due to fire, seasonality, habitat heterogeneity, etc., and will really put the science teams to the test. The aquatic ecosystems will be no less challenging.”

“The world is facing an extinction crisis,” says Hestir, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Merced. “We are experiencing the sixth great extinction in the history of the Earth, with unprecedented rates of species loss. Understanding the diversity of life, what drives it and how it might change in the future is critical to maintaining and protecting life on Earth — for us and all creatures.”