Amazonia Biodiversity Estimation
using
Remote Sensing
and
Indigenous Taxonomy
DATA COLLECTION METHODOLOGY
A preliminary survey will be made, accompanied by the local inhabitants visiting all the places considered of interest by the local community (Brazil nuts tree, rubber trees, medicinal pants , hunting and fishing locations as well breeding grounds and "source habitats" that is areas where local reproductive success is greater than local mortality as well as other places of ecological interest. Also a set of environmental gradient direct transients will be selected using remotely sensed data and the indications of the local communities. All these sites will be precisely localized with the help of GPS.
Verbal explanations and visual and audio-visual evidence will be recorded with the help of a video camera time synchronized with GPS. The GPS could also be conveniently connected to a portable computer containing the GIS (and in the future also connected via Radio TCP/IP to Internet)
From the transcription of the precisely localised in time and space verbal real time recorded reporting by the members of the local community will be extracted the significant key word which , appropriately numerically coded, can be inserted as categories into raster maps of the GIS and thus become amenable to the standard GIS processing using then standard GIS tools.
When the GPS and video-camera are not available or inconvenient reporting will be made by registering into preprinted form time, location , and bio-data .
Appropriate sampling methods are being developed based on techniques already in use by the local communities (hunting, fishing, fruit and medicinal plants collecting etc.) and so that it will be possible to perform the standard measures of biodiversity such as the alpha, beta, gamma , Shannon and Simpson measures.