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Speaker: Dr Peter Long, Biodiversity Institute, University of Oxford
LEFT is a web-based decision support tool originally developed to aid extractive industries in evaluating the pattern of relative ecological value across a landscape to inform their planning of facility placement such that environmental impact is minimised. A user defines an area of interest anywhere globally and the tool automatically processes a series of high-quality datasets using standardised algorithms to produce maps at 300m resolution of landcover class, numbers of globally threatened terrestrial vertebrate species, beta-diversity of terrestrial vertebrates and flowering plants, habitat fragmentation, wetland habitat connectivity, numbers of migratory species and vegetation resilience. These results are aggregated to produce a single map of relative ecological value. The tool then generates a customised pdf report and a zip file of GIS data for the area requested. Results are delivered to users by email within a few minutes of job submission.
Dr. Peter Long is a James Martin research fellow working with Prof Kathy Willis at the Institute of Biodiversity in the Department of Zoology and in partnership with Operation Wallacea. He completed his PhD thesis on conservation biology of wetland birds and subsequently worked as a research officer investigating landscape genetics in Madagascar.
Peter is a conservation scientist with research focused on generating spatially-explicit scenarios of land cover and biodiversity to inform conservation management. Research focuses on wetlands, tropical moist forests and dry forests.
His research uses GIS techniques to address ecological questions including remote sensing, classification and change analysis, and species distribution models. Also interested in monitoring techniques, the derivation of robust biodiversity indicators and population size and density estimation. Increasingly involved in conservation capacity building and training, especially in Madagascar.