IBM, provider of global hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence, and consulting expertise to clients in more than 175 countries, and the World Wide Fund for Nature-Germany have announced that they will work together to develop a solution to help monitor keystone species. The first keystone species to be taken up by the project is the critically endangered African forest elephant.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature defines keystone species as those that are critical to maintain the integrity of the ecosystems they belong to. Without them, the very existence of those ecosystems and all species within them are threatened. That is why global ecosystem restoration efforts now focus on urgent action to conserve endangered keystone species.
The African forest elephant (scientific name Loxodonta cyclotis) is a subgroup of the African elephant. Over the past century, its population has declined across most of its range. The African Elephant Status Report 2016 of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species estimated a continental population of 415,428 for the African savannah and forest elephants combined. It reported a decline of approximately 111,000 elephants since 2006.
The African forest elephant was officially recognized as a unique species in 2001. The animal thrives in the continent’s tropical forests and is smaller than the savannah elephant and has a different tusk shape. It is now mostly found in the central African forest ranges, with 72% of the population located in Gabon and Congo. Its presence has been shown to increase carbon storage in its habitat.
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IBM said in a press release that it aims to combine its expertise in sustainability and technology with WWF’s extensive experience in wildlife conservation to design a solution that uses visual inspection powered by artificial intelligence to enhance elephant tracking, supporting the accurate identification of individuals from camera-trap photos.
Once fully developed, the technology could be used by organizations to assess the financial value of nature’s contribution to people provided by the elephants, such as carbon sequestration ‘services’, recognizing the role they play in maintaining healthy ecosystems, IBM said.
The population of this particular keystone species has fallen over 80% in recent years due to habitat loss and poaching in the Congo basin. As businesses work to address climate change, supporting the restoration of nature can play a critical role in reducing carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
By harnessing the power of technology to track and value natural capital, organizations can unlock new opportunities to support climate change mitigation efforts while identifying new sustainable finance investments, IBM said.
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The concept of natural capital refers to the world’s natural assets, including geology, soil, air, water, and all wild life. These assets provide a range of ecosystem services, which are the direct and indirect ways in which nature contributes to human well-being, or nature’s contribution to people.
For instance, a single African forest elephant, roaming freely in its natural habitat, can increase the forest’s net carbon capture capacity by almost 250 acres. This is equivalent to removing a year’s worth of emissions from 2,047 cars from the atmosphere. According to the International Monetary Fund, this translates to a value of up to $1.75 million per elephant, considering the carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services the animal provides.
However, counting African forest elephants is both difficult and costly, according to Dr Thomas Breuer, WWF Germany’s coordinator for the project. “The logistics are complex and the resulting population numbers are not precise,” Dr Breuer said. “Being able to identify individual elephants from camera-trap images with the help of AI has the potential to be a game-changer.”
IBM Maximo Visual Inspection will be used in the project. Leveraging the software’s artificial intelligence-powered visual inspection and modelling capabilities, the solution aims to analyze images from camera traps and film to identify individual elephants with greater accuracy. Currently, the use case focuses on head and tusk-related image recognition, similar to a fingerprint for humans.
According to Dr Breuer, artificial intelligence can also help to monitor individual animals in space and time, “giving us more robust and detailed population estimates and allowing for performance-based conservation payments, such as wildlife credits”. He said the spatial data will also show where the elephants move, helping to protect those corridors.
“At IBM, we strive to make a lasting, positive impact on the world in business, our environment, and the communities in which we work and live,” Oday Abbosh, global sustainability services leader, IBM Consulting, said. “Our collaboration with WWF marks a significant step forward in this effort.”
“Our technology will play a crucial role in streamlining the process of identifying and accounting for the individual elephants,” said Kendra Dekeyrel, IBM’s vice-president of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and Asset Management. “This is an exciting new use of IBM software, which… can help create new ways to accelerate organizations’ sustainability efforts.”
IBM and WWF also aim to leverage IBM Environmental Intelligence to detect above-ground biomass and vegetation levels in areas where the elephants are present, to enable more accurate predictions of their future locations. This will ultimately help the process of quantifying and tokenizing the value of carbon services provided by the African forest elephant, providing organizations with insights they can use to further drive sustainability efforts, IBM said in its release.
SOURCE: PR Newswire
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