https://aristeaus.herokuapp.com/static/poster.png
The COVID-19 outbreak has affected people across 185 countries, and the effects have reached unbelievable levels, beyond the spread of the disease itself and efforts to quarantine it. However, as people have been confined to their homes, and the major industrial areas have reduced their production rates, wildlife has discovered a Quiet Planet, with less human disturbance, traffic and polluting fumes. In the UK, the councils of Flintshire, Lincolnshire, Newcastle, Norfolk, and Somerset are redistributing the resources to pandemic-related activities, leaving the roadside verges uncut. This has not only stimulated wildflowers bloom, but also changed the declining trend in the wild bee population.
For British bees, there is still hope as a first step could be taken by some authorities from Devon, which have already accepted that the verge mowing operation should be done later and less frequently. But what about the other endangered species?
Through our project, we would like to show that even the slightest change in societal habits could improve the life of organisms on Earth. We are living in near-unprecedented times and we believe the minimal impact of human factors on the environment is a great opportunity to learn better about our ecosystem.
Nowadays, things are changing quickly, and NASA has demonstrated to us that the sky is no more the limit. However, for other organisms, Earth is the only home, and their lives rely on how humans manage to keep the fragile natural equilibrium intact. Bees represent just a tiny percent of the whole endangered species all around the world, each one providing important ecosystem services. ⅓ of the global food is pollination dependent and nearly 80% of the insect crop pollination is done by honey bees. Therefore, protecting them, we will be able to support the food chain worldwide, responding to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2: ZERO HUNGER.
As bees are great indicators of how healthy, or otherwise, our environment is, Project Aristaeus also tackles other sustainable development goals proposed by the United Nations. Specifically, it offers insights into SDG 15: THE LIFE ON EARTH and SDG 13: CLIMATE ACTION.
We have come up with an automated information portal, in which climatic data, specifically the daytime temperature, is correlated with land use, ground ozone and nitrogen dioxide concentrations, and both normalized difference and enhanced vegetation indexes. This portal is accessible publicly but is targeted towards local government agencies and environmental associations. For now, this addresses the UK only but we plan on scaling the initiative worldwide.
HIVE approached this project by first, dividing the workload up into specified roles that suited the members of our team. We decided that the split would consist of a software team, a data analysis team and an engagement team. Each team consisted of a pair of HIVE members who would aid each other in fulfilling their designated tasks. We found splitting into pairs like this enabled us to hold each other accountable and remain productive in this remote working environment.
For Project Aristaeus, we utilised measurements taken from NASA's Aura and Terra missions. The data collected from the Terra mission utilised the MODIS instrument which provided us with measurements of NDVI, EVI and land surface temperature (LST). Meanwhile, the Aura mission, utilising the OMI instrument, provided us with measurements of concentrations for ozone and nitrogen dioxide gas in the troposphere.
All datasets were retrieved from NASA's Earthdata Search.
As part of NASA’s Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge, our team decided to document how healthy bee environments changed due to the lockdown policy that was implemented in the UK and Ireland on the 23rd of March 2020.
The environmental factors which we used to define a healthy environment for bees to thrive in consist of the following:
All datasets are then combined to form a single map for each month outlining the optimal geographical locations for bees to prosper. This is achieved by presenting a novel approach: the Healthy Bee Environment Criteria.
As can be viewed below, a map of the UK and Ireland has been divided into small regional units. Each of these regional units is associated with a value for each of the environmental factors that have been listed above. If all of a region’s values lie within the threshold imposed by HIVE, that region will be given a correspondingly high score and is coloured a bright shade of yellow. Conversely, if a region happens to not meet any or only a few of the criteria imposed, that region will be given a correspondingly low score and is coloured blue. Specifically, we are looking into the changes which occur in the councils of Flintshire, Lincolnshire, Newcastle, Norfolk, and Somerset.
Example image for our Healthy Bee Environment map for the month of April: https://aristeaus.herokuapp.com/static/apr1.png
Results are neatly presented on our website with a slider to visualize the monthly differences.
We were able to find very interesting data and to visualize it effectively (e.g. using earthpy) combining data from different geographical locations. Using a slider on the website the reader can clearly see how the vegetation indices have increased across most of the UK since the beginning of the pandemic, for example. We have built the website which uses space-based data to monitor where geographically bee populations can thrive in the UK.
None of us had any experience in dealing with satellite-based data prior to this challenge and, therefore, one of the main problems we encountered was using & opening hdf and he5 files downloaded from the Earthdata search to analyze the desired data.
Many thanks various Space Apps volunteers and mentors for helping us with our several questions and problems. These people include Eva_Ambassador and Chiara Chiesa.
We intend to scale the initiative worldwide as it is also relevant to other countries that confront a decline trend in wild bee population. We would also like to create another section which can allow beekeepers to pinpoint the location of their hives and share the information regarding the weight of the hive- a great indicator of bee health. Our desire is to create a community and even to cooperate with other websites specialized in beekeeping to improve the accuracy of our estimations.
Above all bee websites, we hope to communicate with Urban Bees’ project, called Hive Talking.
Using their program which finds out where the beekeepers are located, we can notice them where and when the changes in healthy bee environmental conditions occur.
Twitter: @HIVE_aristaeus
Website: https://aristeaus.herokuapp.com/
Walkthrough: https://youtu.be/cGja5Xa75QA
Datasets:
