BIOSHI

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xYphf6cM-lQ1WfSQwLC7SD_ec0r7cftk/view?usp=sharing

https://bit.ly/simact-bioshi

BACKGROUND

The Amazon Rainforest is the target of research globally in view of its deforestation rate, which was in a great increase during the 20th century. In 1988, the Brazilian government launched a data collection system called PRODES, which uses satellite images, like the ones provided by Lansat, in order to obtain annual reports of deforestation rates in the Legal Amazon and carry out measures according to the results.

The data obtained with PRODES not only helps to recognize the environmental status of the Legal Amazon, but also recognizes whether or not the measures implemented during the year were effective.

The most recognized satellite that allows obtaining the images used in PRODES is LANDSAT-5/TM, but currently, a large number of satellite images are obtained from LANDSAT 8/OLI, CBERS 4 and IRS-2.

Landsat satellites provide images occasionally, so, in solution to that, INPE launched the DETEL satellite system in 2004. DETEL presents daily observations of the Amazon and alerts of any environmental hazards. Deforestation and degradation information is obtained through visual interpretation incorporating the Linear Spectral Mixing Model (MLME) technique.

The use of satellite images of the Legal Amazon and annual reports presenting updated information with up to 95% accuracy, significantly decreased the rate of deforestation, especially after the launch of the DETER satellite. Seeing the global approach to the Amazon Rainforest, this project now wants to take a more local approach.

The UNESCO World Heritage, the Darien National Park, has been at risk of deforestation for the last 15 years due to chainsaws and excavators from logging companies.

The Guna, Emberá, and Wounaan, indigenous peoples in the Darien area, tired of being ignored in the face of the environmental situation in the Darien Gap, decide to take the initiative to solve the problem. The project of a lawyer, a journalist, the drone pilot, cartographers, and representatives, guided by the slogan :

“Un nativo sin tierra es un nativo muerto. Y no queremos morir”

《“A native without land is a dead native. And we don't want to die”》, generated an updated map and images of the Darien Gap to present the reality and demand that the Panamanian Government makes changes to save the Darien Gap from deforestation.

Importance in our project

The Darien Rainforest is a National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site. This significant factor united with Panama's strategic position; geographically speaking, it's vital to preserve thousands of exotic species (flora and fauna), not only locally but globally. 

It's one of the most remote places on Earth. Therefore, it is a roadless region where the primary mode of transportation for the indigenous communities is by hand-paddled canoes, which difficulties the access to basic needs and services due to strong river currents and unstable weather.

 Drug trafficking, violence, death threats, massive deforestation, and migration movement: these are only a few things that indigenous people in the Darien Gap have to deal with daily. For years, around 35,000 indigenous people from 3 major communities in this region: Guna, Emberá, and Wounaan, have been fighting for their rights and the Darien forest conservation. Their goal is to defend the forest territory from the increasing market of illegal wood acquisition. Their motto is "A native without land is a dead native. And we don't want to die". 

This project focuses on providing these communities with a tool to monitor the forest, which is their home. This tool, together with access to satellite images from the LANDSAT project, allows them to make outstanding reports combining both types of data in order to participate in the decision-making processes in Worldwide Assemblies regarding environmental issues. Exposure to this situation is fundamental because competent authorities and the government have neglected the topic, allowing the massive deforestation undercover for their own political and economic benefits. This project would uproot illegal timber transit through the region, quickly identifying in which area there are heavy machinery movements before they chopped trees massively, and the damage is irreversible. In addition, it would automate the collection of massive data and reduce the efforts needed to monitor large amounts of land. 

Socioeconomic situation of Panama: Looking into Darien

The region that includes the province of Darién and the Emberá-Wounaan region is perhaps the most isolated of all the regions of Panama, which leads to being one of the least studied. This region has functioned over time as a natural barrier between Central and South America. It’s relevant to mention that there are no land communication routes that cross within the area to cover its entirety currently.

According to the map "POPULATION DENSITY, 2002" of Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) Darien is part of the regions in the territory less populated with a growth of 1-5 people per this is calculated in a resolution of 30 seconds of arc this makes the province characterized by being scarce, dispersed and heterogeneous, focusing on numerous small towns. Unlike the province of Panama which has a range of 251-1000 people, adding also that the highest concentration of inhabitants in the urban area is within this range and these are the provincial capitals, such as Colón, David, Santiago, Chitré, Las Tablas, Penonomé and so on. Without neglecting to mention there are places where equality overpasses, this is observed in the map "GINI" where our country presents different distributions of which we can mention the equality of 0.15 to 0.32, average equality with a 0.32 to 0.33, equality from 0.33 to 0.35, average equality from 0.35 to 0.37 and finally within the ranges the high inequality from 0.37 to 0.53, to which it leads to mention that the province of Darién is distributed by the five ranges already mentioned, according to the map. What makes Darien reflect a dualistic economy in Panama and this affects the levels of development in the provinces, causing great problems, since it is the province most affected by poverty, having 64.8% of households in extreme poverty, and 83.7% under general poverty. In comparison, 36.0% of households in the national territory are in extreme poverty.

Current Environmental state of Darien

Forest management has been significantly limited by the loss of native forests, in a consequence of forest exploitation. In 2010, Darién had 1.10 Mha of forested coverage, extending more than 91% of the land surface sites.It lost 3.54 kha of forested coverage in 2020, equivalent to 2.19 Mt of CO₂ emissions. The regressive evolution of forests has firmly reflected a behavior of forest availability for the production of forest assets, and has been drastically reduced, explains FAO. Darien has been dealing with being one of the first locations of the loss of forested coverage in the region with 68.4 kha, it has been compared with an average of 53.9 kha, giving rise to 63% of all the loss of forested coverage between 2001 to 2020. Comparing these results in the same years, but at the regional level within the national territory, Darién has lost 108 kha of forested coverage, which would be equivalent to a 100% decrease of our National Rainforest since 2000 and 24% of the total worldwide. Interestingly, it is also part of the main regions that were responsible for 64% of all the gain of the forested coverage between 2001 and 2012, winning 5.16 kha of arboreal coverage throughout the region, which is equivalent to 16% of the profit of the arboreal gain. Coverage in Panama. We should not fail to mention that the Darien National Park has always been one of the largest and important adjacent protected areas and blocks of the national territory. The Government has taken some precautions, like the environmental education programs, but above all encourage the communities to make their complaints about deforestation.

Solution to our problem

In our project, the solution we came up with is a monitoring and warning system against illegal logging (SIMACT) . This system will have a set of cylinders with sensors embedded in the ground, which can detect if there is illegal logging either by unusual ground movement or through the system that includes acoustic sensors.

SPECIFICATIONS

The sensor used will be the Reftek 151B is a broadband seismometer. It is a triaxial and orthogonal type sensor with frequencies between 0.0083 Hz - 50 Hz. The 151B contains three independent sensors (one vertical and two horizontal). It is characterized by low instrumental noise, long dynamic range, and easy installation and use. This equipment is ideal for local, regional, and global seismic studies, in different installations and configurations.

IMPLEMENTATION

The system in the first phase must make a study of the forest to collect data in which we will determine what are the normal values of the area either in the seismic area and the acoustic area. We start the first phase with a total of 20 sensors every 8 km which will be connected to a LoRaWAN network for real-time monitoring and instantaneous alerts.

In the second phase, with the results of the previous phase, the pertinent adjustments will be made and the system will be expanded to cover more areas of the forest and this system will be carried out with a team specialized in the subject in conjunction with the government system. A database will be implemented with the reports of anomalies and the system will be carried out in conjunction with the neighboring government to have a control 

For the third phase in this phase, we will implement the use of drones to increase the level of certainty and precision of the work that is being carried out with the drones we will use quadcopters and airplanes since with these we will obtain high-quality images. 

In the fourth phase, Panama will implement its own satellite to have better accuracy in data management and the development of new projects.

NETWORK CONNECTION

It is proposed to use a LoRaWAN network due to its low power consumption, range of up to 20 km and it is ideal for an IoT network. Another of its benefits is the visualization of data in real-time and even sending instant alarms. Furthermore, SIMACT contemplates the use of artificial intelligence to detect a greater range of sounds and differentiate between them, in addition to the use of Big Data for the analysis of massive amounts of data that would be collected daily in the vast Darien jungle.

Future of our project

Knowing our current limitation as investigators, we recognize the following challenges of our project

• Efficient and accurate connectivity between the local sensor system and the Panamanian database.
• Professionals specialized in satellite image readings to present the deforestation rate in the Darien Rainforest annually.
• Active awareness by the government, especially Mi Ambiente, to generate the necessary measures and alerts required by the state of the Darien environmental crisis.

EarthData: Open access for open science 

• Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
• Earth Observatory 

USGS (United State Geological Survey) 

Global Forest Watch

Rainforest Foundation US

Instituto Nacional de Investigación Espacial del Brasil (INPE)

We are a group of Biomedical Engineering and Instrumentation students at the Universidad Latina de Panamá, participating for the first time in the Space App challenge encouraged by Professor Ruben Ortiz.

From the moment we were told about the Space app Challenge, we had doubts about its dynamics, but above all, we were curious about our own potential in carrying it out.

As a team we reviewed the list of challenges offered on the Space app website and we felt inclined towards the “Space for change”. Watching the explanatory videos of the challenge and understanding the objective, it reminded us of our own indigenous communities in Panama. Since they are minorities in a situation of poverty, their voices are not being heard or taken into consideration by the authorities.

We decided to focus our research on the Darién Rainforest and how its deforestation has affected the Guna, Emberá and Wounaan communities, wishing to be able to obtain accurate and current data, as well as avoiding human activities that affect the national ecosystem.

We faced many difficulties since there were topics out of our current understanding, but we were able to work on them by investigating and asking advice from professionals in the area.

INPE. (n.d). DETER. Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra. http://www.obt.inpe.br/OBT/assuntos/programas/amazonia/deter/deter 

INPE. (2021, 16 June). PRODES - Amazônia. Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra. http://www.obt.inpe.br/OBT/assuntos/programas/amazonia/prodes/prodes/ 

NASA. (2020). Tracking Amazon Deforestation from Above. Nasa Earth Observatory. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145988/tracking-amazon-deforestation-from-above 

Salazar, M. (2019, 3 June). La estrategia de los indígenas panameños para proteger los bosques del Tapón del Darién. MONGABAY. https://es.mongabay.com/2019/06/indigenas-panama-darien-video/ 

LoRa Alliance. (n.d). About LoRaWAN: What is LoRaWAN® Specification. https://lora-alliance.org/about-lorawan/

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (n.d). Status for: Vegetation Indices (MOD13). https://modis-land.gsfc.nasa.gov/ValStatus.php?ProductID=MOD13

Applications | REF TEK. (2015). REF TEK. https://www.reftek.com/applications

FarEarth Observer - A World of Landsat. (2011). FarEarth Observer. http://observer.farearth.com/observer/?opts=ignoreversion

FAO. (2021). Tendencia y situación actual del entorno macro. http://www.fao.org/3/j4245s/j4245s05.htm 

GFW. (2020). Panama Deforestation Rates & Statistics | GFW. Global Forest Watch. https://acortar.link/j3p52P 

IUCN. (2020, December). Darién National Park. World Heritage Outlook. https://worldheritageoutlook.iucn.org/es/explore-sites/wdpaid/2554 

OAS. (n.d). H.1 Población y migración. http://www.oas.org/dsd/publications/unit/oea30s/ch064.htm 

SEDAC. (2021). Map Gallery | SEDAC. Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (Sedac). https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/maps/gallery/search 

USGS. (n.d). Landsat Missions. https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/nli/landsat 

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This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.