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James N. Levitt
Conservation via Satellite
Leveraging Remote Sensing to Monitor the Pingree Easement
Despite increasing human population pressures around the world, y el
unprecedented environmental impacts that come in their wake, conservationists
have made remarkable headway since the mid-twentieth century in extending pro-
tection to landscapes on every continent. Por ejemplo, in the four decades between
1962 y 2003, the IUCN/World Conservation Union reports that the number of
protected areas it tracks worldwide increased more than ten-fold, de 9,214 a
102,102.1 This represents nearly an eight-fold increase in area, de 2.4 millón
square kilometers in 1962 a 18.8 million square kilometers (acerca de 4.6 billion
acres) en 2003. To get a sense of this scale, consider that the lands in the 2003 inven-
conservador, though distributed across the globe, are equivalent to about 96% of the area
covered by the United States and Canada, combined.2
This impressive tally is the result of countless conservationists employing a
wide range of conservation strategies. Worldwide, national parks have been creat-
ed in nearly every country that is represented at the United Nations. Augmenting
more traditional conservation strategies, such as the creation of national parks,
national forests, and national wildlife refuges, are more novel methods for protect-
ing land, such as multi-party working forest conservation easements (WFCEs) eso
legally prevent commercial and residential development on actively-timbered, pri-
vately-owned forestland. Landscape-scale WFCEs are emerging as significant land
protection devices that governments and non-profit entities can use to protect pri-
vately-owned forestland in such places as the Northern Forest, a multi-jurisdic-
tional region that stretches from New York State to Maine in the United States, y
into the provinces of Atlantic Canada. To cite one outstanding example, the New
England Forestry Foundation’s 762,000-acre Pingree project in Maine has set a
new standard for conservation on private lands in the area (ver figura 1).
Notwithstanding this remarkable achievement, conservation practitioners face
daunting challenges. Just as considerable expanses of open space have been pro-
tected, immense swaths of previously undeveloped land are being converted to
intensive agriculture and building sites, from South Carolina to South Africa. Este
Jim Levitt is director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard
Forest and a Research Fellow at the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and
Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. A graduate of Yale College
and the Yale School of Management, Levitt lives with his wife and their three chil-
dren in Belmont, Massachusetts.
© 2006 Tagore LLC
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Conservation via Satellite
Cifra 1. An aerial view of Chandler Lake, one of the many natural features pro-
tected by the Pingree Easement
Photograph courtesy of the New England Forestry Foundation.3
development often has devastating effects on a diverse array of biological commu-
niidades (collectively referred to as “biodiversity”) and negative impacts on an
increasingly well-understood array of ecosystem services provided by the natural
environment itself.
Even as they meet ambitious goals for land protection, practitioners face com-
plex new challenges. One of the most difficult is the perpetual task of efficiently
and effectively monitoring the physical changes that occur on protected land-
scapes—changes induced both by nature and by humankind. Such monitoring is
essential if public, privado, and non-profit organizations are to be good stewards of
the land, enforcing legal protections and preventing disruptive human activities,
such as illegal hunting of endangered species and poaching of timber, de
degrading the quality of the protected landscapes.
Over the past several decades an inventive and potentially effective method has
emerged for detecting changes on protected landscapes. That method is the use of
satellite-based remote sensing technology, in combination with more detailed aer-
ial photography and traditional on-the-ground patrols and inspections, to observe
changes in the condition of a particular territory. En décadas recientes, several organ-
including the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
izations,
(NASA), WinRock International, and the World Resources Institute’s Global Forest
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James Levitt
Watch,4 have employed satellite and aerial remote sensing technology to advance
our understanding of human and natural change in forested landscapes, in both
the developing and the developed world. Only recently, sin embargo, have such tools
been applied by organizations such as land trusts that have legal and ongoing
responsibility to enforce working forest conservation easements and similar multi-
party land protection agreements. The bulk of this essay focuses on a highly ambi-
tious effort spearheaded by researchers at the University of Maine and conserva-
tionists associated with the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) to employ
this rapidly evolving technology to monitor a WFCE. Before I discuss NEFF’s ini-
tiative, sin embargo, I offer a little historical perspective.
“THESE REFUGES … ARE WORTHLESS UNLESS THEY ARE PROTECTED”
Less than two years into his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt had already scored a
few successes in his storied effort to expand the nation’s inventory of conserved
landscapes. Following precedents set by earlier presidents, he had created a new
national park at Crater Lake in Oregon and a new forest reserve at Luquillo, en
Puerto Rico.5 By early 1903, his focus turned to the creation of two new species of
federal lands: the first of several dozen Bureau of Reclamation projects in the West,
and the nation’s first federal bird reservation at Pelican Island, on Florida’s Atlantic
coast.
Between March 14, 1903, when Pelican Island was created, and the day in 1909
when he turned over the White House to William Howard Taft, Roosevelt managed
to establish a total of 51 federal bird reservations, the first units of what is today
the Federal Wildlife Refuge System, a vast collection of protected landscapes cov-
ering more than 96 million acres in the United States.6 Roosevelt was justly proud
of what he had done to “preserve from destruction beautiful and wonderfully wild
creatures whose existence was threatened by greed and wantonness.” He boasted in
his autobiography that “the creation of these reservations at once placed the
United States in the front rank of the world work of bird protection.”7
As the nation’s chief executive, Roosevelt had the authority to set aside land for
conservation—but not to allocate funds to pay the wardens who would monitor
the new bird sanctuaries. To fill the gap, he turned to his friends in the growing
Audubon movement for philanthropic support. They were happy to help. Con
funds provided by philanthropists associated with the Audubon movement and
the American Ornithological Union, Paul Kroegel was hired to oversee Pelican
Island, a somewhat solitary and occasionally dangerous job. Asimismo, Guy Bradley
and C.G. McLeod were paid modestly to monitor and protect other sites in South
Florida. Tragically, Bradley and McLeod were killed in the line of duty by poachers
who sought to kill the resident wild birds for their plumage, which they could sell
for high prices to milliners seeking to decorate fashionable ladies’ headwear.
The national outrage that followed the deaths of Bradley and McLeod helped
build passionate nationwide support for the cause of conservation, and respect for
the essential work done by wardens. Retrospectively praising the Audubon move-
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Conservation via Satellite
ment for its help, Roosevelt underscored the importance of constant vigilance over
protected lands: “It was the Audubon Society which started the movement for the
establishment of bird refuges. The society now protects and polices about one hun-
dred of these refuges, cual, por supuesto, are worthless unless they are protected.”8
Hoy, more than a century after Theodore Roosevelt famously championed
land and habitat conservation, the oversight and monitoring of protected lands in
both developing and developed
nations around the world remains a
costly, difficult, and sometimes dan-
gerous task.
Even as they meet ambitious
goals for land protection,
practitioners face complex
new challenges. Uno de los
most difficult is the perpetual
task of efficiently and
effectively monitoring the
physical changes that occur
on protected landscapes—
changes induced both by
nature and by humankind.
Por ejemplo, in the world’s less
developed regions, wardens of land
typically protected by regional and
national governments often face the
task of protecting landscapes from
gangs of poachers who seek to prof-
it from the sale of illicitly captured
wildlife and stolen timber. As noted
by one warden responsible for over-
seeing nature preserves on the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands off
the coast of mainland India, “we
must always be prepared
para
encounters with criminals who are
better armed and equipped than we
are.”9 Similarly, WWF, the interna-
tional conservation group, started a
project in 2003 to deploy an “anti-
timber-poaching brigade in Siberia” to halt “widespread illegal and semi-legal log-
ging activities” in a region of the Burea Mountains “that hosts a unique mixture of
temperate, boreal and endemic Daurian species, including the last remaining
Korean pine (cedar) forests.”10 Similar conservation monitoring and enforcement
measures are underway around the globe from Malaysia to the Congo Basin.11 Such
anti-poaching initiatives involve serious law enforcement measures, at consider-
able expense. Given that many such warden operations depend largely upon on-
the-ground patrols over vast territories populated by precious few citizens, the per-
sonnel costs of such operations alone can be considerable.
In nations with more developed economies, such as the United States and
Canada, the protected-land stewardship challenges are in some ways similar to
those found in the developing world, and in some ways quite different. Like their
counterparts in India, wardens of government-owned and managed- forest and
wildlife refuges in the U.S. must remain vigilant against a wide variety of encroach-
mentos, including the threat of aggressive timber and wildlife poachers. In a recent
publicación, the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, an agency of the state of
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James Levitt
Vermont, reported that “due to the firearm-related link to game law violations,
game wardens are seven times more likely than other types of law enforcement
officers to be seriously injured or killed in an assault.”12
A distinctive complication faces conservationists working in the United States:
legally protected lands are often owned by a vast multiplicity of public, privado, y
non-profit entities. Como consecuencia, the protection and stewardship of the land
is not principally confined to local, estado, and federal government agencies, or even
to non-profits that are assisting such governmental entities. Even on very large
parcels of land, that responsibility now also falls to combinations of organizations
that have acquired various conservation easements (alternatively called “conserva-
tion restrictions”) on their own land, or who are contractually responsible to the
public for enforcing such restrictions on land owned by a third party.
Considerar, Por ejemplo, a substantial challenge now facing the New England
Forestry Foundation (NEFF), a small, Massachusetts-based non-profit organiza-
tion focused on the conservation of working forests. To understand the challenge,
let us step back to a meeting that took place in the late 1990s at Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A TRULY BIG DEAL
en la primavera de 1999, Keith Ross, Frank Reed, Jerry Bertrand, and Bill King made
a trip to Cambridge for a brainstorming session with several Kennedy School fac-
ulty and staff about the Pingree project, a private forest conservation effort of
unprecedented scale and novel design being launched by the New England
Forestry Foundation.13 The proposed project aimed to buy a Working Forest
Conservation Easement on more than 750,000 acres (más que 300,000 hectares)
of private forestland owned by the Pingree family in northern Maine. By buying
the easement from the family, NEFF would effectively extinguish any rights to
develop the land for residential, comercial, or industrial purposes, assuring that
it would remain as working forestland owned by the Pingrees, as well as a resource
providing wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities, in perpetuity.
ross, a stout, friendly bear of a man with a curly blond beard, was the group’s
leader and the project’s visionary. He was also the only one of the four actually
employed by the New England Forestry Foundation. The other three were either
NEFF board members or consultants to the Pingree project. As Ross and his team
began describing the project, the exceptional nature of their enterprise became
apparent.
Measured in acres protected, the project that Ross and his associates described
would be more than one hundred times larger than any land deal the
NEFF had ever consummated in its fifty-five year history. En efecto, if it
succeeded, the effort would be the largest conservation easement project
in American history, covering a land area larger than the state of Rhode
Island. Además, the project, as it was described, intended to set sev-
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Conservation via Satellite
eral important precedents in the field of land conservation.
Primero, in part because of its scale and the limited bundle of development rights
that the easement agreement was putting under restriction, the project was being
marketed to potential donors with a remarkably modest price of $37.10 per acre protected. Segundo, at the request of the Pingree family, the effort was designed to raise from non-government sources all or most of the $28 million that would be
used to purchase the easement itself, plus several million dollars to cover campaign
expenses and to set up a permanent endowment for easement stewardship. Tercero,
because NEFF was a very small and relatively entrepreneurial organization (it then
had six full-time employees), it planned to have a “virtual organization” run the
fundraising campaign, and also design and implement a novel stewardship moni-
toring program. The dozen or so individuals in the virtual “Pingree Forest
Partnership” included only one or two full-time NEFF employees at any given
tiempo, along with Pingree family interests. Finalmente, the whole fundraising effort to
underwrite this historic WFCE had to be completed by December 31, 2000—less
than two years hence.
As if that wasn’t ambitious enough, Ross also mentioned that NEFF would
have to figure out a novel technical method so it could monitor the vast, widely
dispersed easement on a limited endowment. NEFF had to be able to assure proj-
ect donors that the project could manage such monitoring in perpetuity in accor-
dance with the stipulations in the conservation easement.
The meeting at the Kennedy School was cordial, lively, and wide-ranging, pero
the group had no “Eureka!” suggestions regarding fund-raising, organizing, o
monitoring protocols. After more than two hours of exchange, the meeting
adjourned. Afterwards, conversations among Kennedy School participants were
colored with both hope and a fair amount of skepticism. In response to a hopeful
comment by a colleague, one participant commented: “Yes, the Pingree Project
would be a ‘big deal’—literally and figuratively—if it gets done by the deadline. Pero
that’s a huge ‘if.’ They’ve got to raise a lot of money in a very short time, and NEFF
has never done anything even close to this scale, in terms of dollars or acres, in its
entire history. We’ll see.”
And so we did see. Over the succeeding year and three-quarters, Ross and his
team employed an inventive communications strategy and worked at an intense
pace to raise sufficient pledges to cover the cost of the deal. They did so in the con-
text of considerable political controversy and public debate. But the entrepreneur-
ial team persevered, and got their pledges by the deadline. With the help of bridge
financiación, NEFF exercised the option to purchase the easement in December 2000.
The following spring they completed the largest private easement deal in American
historia.
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James Levitt
RECOGNIZING THE NEED FOR A NOVEL APPROACH
TO MONITORING PROTECTED LAND
But even with progress on the financial aspects of the Pingree project, the task was
far from complete. As early as the middle of 1999, Keith Ross began working in
earnest with two of his Pingree Forest Partnership colleagues to devise an easement
stewardship and monitoring methodology that would be efficient, effective, y
economically sustainable over many decades. Frank Reed was a forestry consultant
based in Randolph Center, Vermont, who later became a NEFF employee; Peter
Stein was a director of Lyme Timber Company’s Conservation Advisory Services.
Stein was particularly keen to develop new easement monitoring methods; he real-
ized that traditional methods, typically an individual forester riding around a
property in a truck, would not be economically or physically feasible given the very
large scale and wide geographic distribution of the Pingree easement.
The team was quite clear about the importance of this work. From NEFF’s
point of view, ongoing easement monitoring was—and is—essential to achieving
the organization’s conservation objectives. Catherine Hahn, a NEFF Land
Protection Specialist, put it emphatically: “the strength of any conservation ease-
ment program lies in the diligence of the conservation organization’s monitoring
and enforcement activities.”14 Rather than using ongoing monitoring simply as an
enforcement tool, NEFF saw the implementation of the monitoring program as an
opportunity to build a lasting, conservation-oriented bond with the landowner:
“to work with the landowner to ensure that activities on the land conform with the
terms of the easement and to develop a partnership with the landowner in pro-
moting sustainable forestry practices.”15
As it worked to complete the easement deal and set up monitoring systems for
the Pingree forest, NEFF had the great good fortune to be working with a land
owner and land management organization that has maintained an outstanding
record for stewardship and accountability for many generations. The Pingree fam-
ily, which has owned and managed Maine forestland since the early 1840s, tiene
worked to extend that record into the future through an ownership entity formed
en 1974, known as Pingree Associates, led by Stephen Schley. Schley is a sixth-gen-
eration descendant of David Pingree, the entrepreneur who began assembling the
family forestland holdings. Reporting to Pingree Associates is a second entity, el
Seven Islands Land Management Company. That group, set up by the Pingree fam-
ily in 1963, now manages forestland owned both by the family and by others in
New England.16
Given the Pingree family’s motivation to be responsible land owners and good
corporate citizens, Seven Islands took a leadership role in promoting sustainable
forestry practices in Maine. In the early 1990s, Seven Islands decided to become a
pioneer in the field, seeking and gaining Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certifi-
catión. para hacerlo, it agreed to undergo extensive, ongoing reviews by an independ-
ent certification organization, Scientific Certification Systems (SCS). Teniendo
become the largest land manager in the Northern Hemisphere to be FSC certified
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Conservation via Satellite
Cifra 2: The area protected by the 762,192-acre Pingree Easement (in black), dis-
persed throughout Northern Maine
Graphic courtesy of the New England Forestry Foundation and Virtual Design.
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James Levitt
as “well-managed” in 1994, Seven Islands has gone on to maintain its FSC certifi-
catión (as well as Sustainable Forestry Institute certification) into the 21st century.
The careful SCS reviews provided both experience with and extensive documenta-
tion for the monitoring efforts that NEFF launched when it completed the Pingree
easement deal.17
Beyond meeting its own
necesidades, the organization was
aware that if it successfully
developed and implemented
a cost-effective monitoring
protocol, it would set a new
and significant precedent for
forest management
organizations throughout
New England, and eventually,
the nation and the world.
It is important to note that NEFF’s dedication to high-quality, consistent ease-
ment monitoring is not universal among its peer-group of government or non-
profit organizations that hold conservation easements. As explained by Amos Eno,
who became active in the Pingree
project as a consultant in the 1999-
2000 period and served as NEFF’s
executive director from 2002 a
2005. According
to Eno, "el
Pingree Forest Partnership sets a
precedent
for monitoring and
enforcing its conservation ease-
mento. Many conservation ease-
ments are rarely or cavalierly moni-
tored. According to a 1998 informe,
none of the State of Maine’s 93 ease-
mentos, which cover about 28,000
acres, are ‘regularly’ monitored.”18
Eno is a great-nephew of Gifford
Pinchot, Theodore Roosevelt’s
brother-in-arms in the fight to
make conservation a national prior-
ity in the early 1900s; he echoes a
sentiment Roosevelt had expressed
almost
earlier:
“Enforcement and monitoring are
the cornerstones to the effective management of a conservation easement; sin
monitoring the easement is of little value.”19
siglo
a
NEFF’s enthusiasm for monitoring was reflected in the energy it put into rais-
ing an endowment to underwrite ongoing Pingree easement monitoring efforts. En
total, NEFF raised $1 million over the course of the Pingree project to support this work.20 This money, now held by a separate community foundation for NEFF’s benefit, will yield approximately $50,000 per year to cover the costs of monitoring
development activities, forestry activities, and forest ecosystem attributes over the
mosaic of Pingree forestlands in Northern Maine (see Figure 2 for an overview
map of the 762,000 acres of forestland protected by the Pingree easement).
With that amount in hand, the challenge facing NEFF was—and is—to use
that endowment to maintain a highly effective monitoring program for many
decades into the future. Beyond meeting its own needs, the organization was aware
that if it successfully developed and implemented a cost-effective monitoring pro-
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Conservation via Satellite
tocol, it would set a new and significant precedent for forest management organi-
zations throughout New England, and eventually, the nation and the world.
Given the potential significance of this work, NEFF ultimately raised addition-
al funds (beyond the endowment to support long-term monitoring) in order to
support the development of the novel three-tiered monitoring methodology and
its dissemination to the forestry community. Funders of this pioneering work
included the Kendall Foundation, NASA, the Ford Foundation, and the Bradley
Fund for the Environment.21
DEVISING A MONITORING PROTOCOL
WITH THE BENEFIT OF PEER REVIEW
In mid-2000, ross, Reed and Stein interviewed several private companies and not-
for-profit organizations that were interested in the challenge of designing such a
methodology. Each offered a variation on the theme of employing satellite-based
remote sensing technologies, which had been used for more than a decade to con-
duct surveys of forest conditions around the world, to monitor the Pingree fami-
ly’s industrial forestry operations and so assure compliance with the NEFF conser-
vation easement.
The most interesting of the potential service providers was a team led by Dr.
Steven A. Sader, a professor in the Department of Forest Management at the
University of Maine in Orono. Sader had been recommended to Peter Stein by
Conrad Reining, who was at that time working with Conservation International
(CI). Reining described to Stein the work that Sader had done for CI in helping to
design a remote sensing protocol for use in CI’s Rapid Assessment Program, a pro-
gram that quickly maps out the biodiversity potential of promising sites such as
the Guatemalan rainforest.
Since the early 1980s, Sader had been experimenting with the application of
remote sensing technologies to forestry related analytical and management issues.22
Despite his teaching load—he also directs the University’s Maine Image Analysis
Laboratory (MIAL)—Sader relished the opportunity to work with Reed, Ross and
piedra. He quickly understood that by engaging with the Pingree project, his team
at the University of Maine could use its expertise in practical and near-term appli-
cations with working foresters.
En 2001, NEFF awarded Sader’s team a contract to put together a monitoring
protocol for the Pingree forest, and they got right to work on a three-tiered, “mul-
tiscale” scheme. It employs medium-resolution Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)
satellite-based remote sensing for the first, highest-level, pass at reviewing changes
in forest conditions. Entonces, aerial photography (or high-resolution satellite-based
imagery) allows closer-in, second-pass inspections of potential trouble spots iden-
tified by the Level 1 análisis. Finalmente, a forester makes on-the-ground inspections,
generally only in those places identified in levels 1 y 2 analysis as meriting fur-
ther inspection, and for those attributes, such as the quality of forest diversity or of
wildlife habitat, that might not be effectively monitored from above.
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James Levitt
As the protocol has evolved since 2001, it has been repeatedly peer-reviewed
and discussed in several venues. Por ejemplo, it was the subject of a day-long meet-
ing that NEFF convened at its offices in Orange, Massachusetts in the spring of
2002. That meeting brought together practitioners in information science and
forestry to consider and propose improvements to the methodology. Además,
the methodology has been described in peer-reviewed and practitioner-oriented
journals several times since the spring of 2002, when it was described in the Journal
of Forestry,23 the professional publication of the Society of American Foresters, el
world’s largest society of professional foresters. Finalmente, the remote sensing scheme
was presented for more diverse audiences interested in the stewardship of protect-
ed landscapes at Land Trust Rally meetings (gatherings of more than 1,500 land
conservationists) in Austin, Texas and Sacramento, California in 2002 y 2003.24
According to Frank Reed, these many reviews and public presentations helped the
innovators become increasingly adept at packaging the protocol so that it could be
transferred to other organizations and applications.
IMPLEMENTATION
The first step in implementing the monitoring protocol was to establish baseline
condiciones. To assemble a comprehensive record of the Pingree forestland, Keith
Ross and his associates at NEFF began to collect documentation even before they
wrapped up the deal’s financial details in March 2001. Pingree Associates and
Seven Islands helped them greatly in this effort by providing extensive informa-
ción. To build on that base, in August 2001 NEFF retained a forester long affiliated
with NEFF: Sherman Small, of New England Forestry Consultants, Cª. Based in
Bethel, Maine, Sherm Small tackled the task diligently. In addition to assembling
the necessary documentation and physically visiting key sites on the landscape, él
identified and mapped landscape features into a complex Geographic Information
Sistema (GIS) database that allows the user to record written information and
assemble time series of graphic images supplied by satellite, aerial, and ground-
level digital cameras.
Generally, the inventory of baseline conditions on the Pingree property had to
accurately reflect the presence of its impressive number of natural attributes,
including “1,180 square miles of protected forestland protected from development;
encima 2,000 miles of river frontage; 72,000 acres of wetlands; 110 remote ponds and
lakes larger than 3 acres; 215 miles of lake and pond frontage; 67 rare and endan-
gered plant sites; 24,800 acres of managed deer yards; 12,264 acres of fragile high
mountain areas over 2,700 feet in elevation; five federally listed endangered plant
sites; peregrine falcon nesting sites; y un 3,000 acre limited harvest management
zone along the St. John River.”25
Específicamente, the technology for collecting the baseline documentation had to
enable present and future NEFF employees and agents to assure compliance with
a carefully negotiated easement agreement. The stated purpose of that agreement
is to maintain “the property forever in its present and historic primarily undevel-
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Conservation via Satellite
oped condition as a working forest, and to conserve and/or enhance forest and
wildlife habitats, shoreline protection, and historic public recreation opportunities
of the Property for present and future generations.”26 To achieve this purpose,
NEFF has the ongoing responsibility to track changes in specific landscape features
(including leases, structures used in forestry activities, caminos, gravel pits, riparian
habitat, clearcuts, wetlands, and recreational use), as well as landscape level attrib-
utes (including forest diversity, ecosystem health, and disturbance). Should varia-
tions from the terms of the WFCE be detected, then NEFF is responsible for work-
ing with the landowner to assure compliance.
Sader, Reed, ross, and their team set up monitoring protocols that could be
performed year after year, providing a detailed, cumulative record of changes over
time in both specific landscape features and landscape-level attributes. Considerar,
Por ejemplo, how they are set up to track changes in one specific landscape
feature—gravel pits—on the Pingree property.
The Pingree conservation easement document has detailed provisions regard-
ing gravel pits,27 and prohibits any excavation of minerals, geothermal resources, o
hydrocarbons, except that rock, gravel, sand, peat, or sod may be removed in con-
nection with forestry activities—for forestry-related road-building purposes.
Gravel pits, which are permitted, cannot exceed 1% of the property at any given
tiempo, or be greater than 10 acres in area at any given location. If a planned expan-
sion of a gravel pit would make it larger than 10 acres, then an unused portion of
the pit must be reclaimed using a seeding procedure recommended by the USDA
Natural Resource Conservation Service (the NRCS), or the NRCS’ appropriate
successor agency.
To monitor compliance with these agreement provisions for this particular
landscape attribute, Sader, Reed, and Ross, in consultation with Pingree Associates
and the land managers at Seven Islands, set up a detailed monitoring protocol.
They first determined baseline conditions by using Global Positioning System
(GPS) technology to “locate each active excavation and unreclaimed excavation on
[a] GPS map of each township.”28 Such
GPS positioning can be accomplished by carefully reading recent satellite
or aerial photos; o, for larger, active pits, a forester can conduct an on-
site inspection using a handheld GPS device. Segundo, using the same
tecnología, they determined the acreage for each excavation. Tercero, ellos
set up a schedule for visiting a sample of active excavations each year to
verify acreage estimates and site conditions. Cuatro, they set up a sched-
ule for communicating with the land manager to learn the schedule for
reclaiming those excavations that are in a position to be reclaimed. Y,
fifth, they prepared to use remote sensing (both Level 1 medium spatial
resolution satellite change detection and Level 2 high-resolution satellite
or aerial photography sampling) to look for expansions of excavation
sites and to conduct ground visits if the size of any excavation were to
acercarse 10 acres.
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James Levitt
Nivel 1 remote sensing, as used in this application, depends on two important
componentes. The first component is imagery from Landsat and comparable satel-
lites sources provided, en este caso, by NASA. Landsat Thematic Mapper informa-
tion provides medium-resolution data at a scale of about 30 X 30 meters. That lets
them distinguish and track specific landscape features such as gravel pits that are
approximately one-quarter acre or larger, using images collected each year in the
spring and early summer (mid-May to late June). For the Pingree project, el
entire easement can be monitored with two Landsat images that cover 13,225
square miles.29
The second component is a change detection algorithm developed by Sader
and his associates at the Maine Image Analysis Laboratory (MIAL). The algorithm
allows the user to identify changes in the landscape by comparing an earlier image
with a later one. The science behind the algorithms builds on a foundation laid by
several decades of research sponsored by organizations such as NASA30 that
employed analog and digital images to track landscape change. The MIAL algo-
rithms, in part based on NASA-sponsored research that Sader led in Central
America,31 have been demonstrated to be quite accurate in detecting expected and
unexpected changes on the ground.
The same technological underpinnings are employed in the protocol for mon-
itoring landscape-level attributes on the Pingree forest protected by the NEFF con-
servation easement. As with specific landscape features, tracking landscape-level
attributes requires combined efforts at all three levels. Considerar, por ejemplo, cómo
the project monitors disturbances in the forest over time, both natural ones and
those caused by human intervention.
Using Level 1 monitoring techniques, Sader and his associates can track forest
harvesting and regrowth patterns that appear on satellite images taken each spring.
Eso es, they can use the MIAL algorithms to analyze data from Landsat images.
Over time, at medium (30-meter) resolutions, they can detect various changes in
forest cover, such as the location and amount of harvest areas created in clearcuts.
Based on such analyses,32 they can confirm whether or not such clearcuts conform
to the restrictions detailed in the Pingree easement (es decir., that “grantor will strive to
maintain no more than 3% of the Property in clear-cut condition”).33 Similarmente,
they can use this type of information to compare actual cutting patterns with the
planned cutting patterns described in the forest management plans (FMPs) pre-
pared by the land manager (en este caso, Seven Islands) and discussed at the annu-
al-information sharing meetings required by the easement agreement.
Nivel 2 analysis allows Sader and his associates to gain further insights, para
ejemplo, when a new or unexpected forest cover disturbance pattern occurs, o
when they must analyze areas of the forest too small to be easily interpreted using
Nivel 1 información. They have several options for obtaining more detailed
imagery. In the Pingree case, the best source may often be the landowner, cual
“collects aerial photography over one-third of the ownership every year and has
agreed to make the photos available for purchase by NEFF.”34 If they cannot get
suitable Level 2 imagery through that source, NEFF can acquire it using small-for-
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Conservation via Satellite
Cifra 3: A comparison of Level 1 medium-resolution imagery from Landsat
(1999-2001) on the left and Level 2 high-resolution (4 meters) imagery from
Ikonos on the right. Note the appearance of equipment trails showing harvesting
patterns in the right-hand photo
Graphic courtesy of the New England Forestry Foundation.
mat cameras in aircraft overflights, or from commercial satellites that can provide
images at a 4 meter resolution (ver figura 3 for an illustration of the detail provid-
editado por 4 meter Ikonos satellite imagery provided by Space Imaging Corporation).
Such Level 2 imagery can often clarify the on-the-ground situation, Por ejemplo
differentiating between mechanical harvests (characteristically marked by logging
trails left by heavy equipment) and large blow-downs of trees caused by such nat-
ural causes as heavy storms or hurricanes.
On-the-ground field visits can be scheduled when the easement monitoring
staff needs finer detail than it can get using Level 1 and Level 2 imagery. Para examen-
por ejemplo, when the diversity of forest stands or the quality of wildlife habitat must be
inspected in a recently disturbed area, there may well be no acceptable substitute
for an on-site visit by a forester. Because such visits are relatively expensive, ellos
must be carefully planned to achieve an optimal use of the forester’s time.
According to Frank Reed and Steve Sader, monitoring using medium-resolu-
tion satellite imagery has gone largely according to expectations, with no signifi-
cant known failure to detect forestry operation patterns on the ground.
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James Levitt
Coordination between the imagery lab and the field staff has also gone well. Para
ejemplo, an image analyst detected an unexpected cutting pattern in a field, pero
Sherm Small was able to show the analyst where that cutting was anticipated, ambos
in the easement language and in the harvesting plan. With that feedback from
Pequeño, the analyst then determined that the cutting had been carried out according
to plan and in adherence with the easement language.
ENFORCEMENT
According to verbal reports by Reed in the first quarter of 2006, discusiones
between the NEFF team and Pingree Associates regarding monitoring and ease-
ment enforcement issues have been cordial and cooperative. While the three-tiered
monitoring protocol was under development, one of the Seven Islands managers
wryly characterized it as “Star Wars proctology,” but now both NEFF and Pingree
Associates/Seven Islands representatives see the findings of the annual monitoring
efforts as valuable and interesting. The annual meetings called for in the easement
agreement have included detailed discussions of actual versus planned forest man-
agement practices on a township-by-township basis. Minor issues have been dis-
cussed from time to time, such as the fact that a lessee in the Pingree forest had
stored a canoe outside of the lease boundary. Sin embargo, no significant disagree-
ments over easement violations have arisen during the first five years of monitor-
En g. Además, in the first five years of easement monitoring on the Pingree site,
the NEFF team has not observed any significant wildlife or timber poaching activ-
ities that would have required intervention by Seven Islands or law enforcement
personal.
As title to ownership of the Pingree forestlands changes, dialogue between the
easement grantor (the Pingree Associates group) and the easement grantee (NEFF)
may present new challenges to NEFF management. Por ejemplo, en 2005, Pingree
Associates sold “a significant parcel of forest land in Northern Maine,”35 including
lands that are protected by the NEFF easement, to a third party. Because Seven
Islands continues to manage that land for the new owners, the easement monitor-
ing has changed very little. Should this land, or other lands under the easement,
come to be managed by a new set of players, then the resulting multi-party moni-
toring dialogue will likely become more complex and time consuming for NEFF
easement monitoring and enforcement teams.
IMPROVING ECONOMIC EFFICIENCIES
As noted above, annually monitoring the Pingree project using conventional
ground-based methods would have been prohibitively expensive. Considerar, para
ejemplo, that the ground-based monitoring of a 20,000+-acre easement in New
England requires several person-days per week, year round.36 At more than thirty
times the size of that easement, the Pingree project might have required a dozen or
more staff foresters, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, a favor-
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Conservation via Satellite
vide similar coverage.
Por el contrario, Steve Sader carries out the bulk of remote monitoring work for
the Pingree easement, with assistance from the staff and graduate students in his
lab (the MIAL). When field visits are required, Sherm Small typically drives over.
According to reports by Frank Reed, the cost per acre of the monitoring program
continues to decline over time, from a level of 10 cents to 15 cents per acre in 2001-
2003 (aproximadamente $75,000 a $100,000 per year for the more than three-quarter
million acre easement area), to approximately 9 cents per acre per year (entre
$60,000 y $70,000) en 2005. This welcome decline in monitoring expenses
brought annual costs closer to the target $50,000 (acerca de 6 cents per acre per year) that can be sustained with funds from the monitoring endowment. The annual decline in costs so far, as well as the anticipated future decline, is likely related to at least three inter-related factors: so-called “experience curve” economies, economies of scale, and economies of scope. The experience curve effect is likely to continue as NEFF accumulates organi- zational experience with the three-tiered monitoring protocol. First observed in manufacturing industries in the mid-20th century by analysts associated with the Boston Consulting Group, such experience curves are now well understood to take hold in both manufacturing and professional operations where on-the-job learn- ing can be passed along, on the job, from one individual to another. Economies of scale are likely to occur as the Maine Image Analysis Lab staff takes responsibility for easement monitoring on nearby tracts of land, such as the Downeast Lakes and Sunrise easements. This tract in Downeast Maine, in combi- nation with adjacent protected forestlands in Maine and across the Canadian bor- der in New Brunswick, accounts for more than a million acres of protected land- scapes. Costs of computer equipment, imagery acquisition, and software are likely to be distributed across multiple projects, reducing the cost of monitoring any given acre. Similarmente, economies of scope are likely to occur as monitoring staff become more practiced at monitoring a variety of specific landscape features and landscape-level attributes. The image analysts expect they will be able to apply learning from monitoring one specific attribute to related challenges that arise while they monitor a second attribute. USING THE TECHNOLOGY IN NEW APPLICATIONS Since it was first implemented for the Pingree easement, the three-tiered monitor- ing protocol has caught the attention of many organizations charged with moni- toring large working forest conservation easements, as well as other large-scale protected landscapes. En 2003, NEFF received funding from the United States Forest Service (USFS) to prepare easement monitoring protocols for two large easements that had been financed in part by the USFS Forest Legacy program. The purpose of the grant, en parte, was to “see if remote monitoring techniques (applied by NEFF to the Pingree conservation easement) could be applied to other land- scape scale easements to improve on the effectiveness and efficiency of ongoing innovations / primavera 2006 59 Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/1/2/44/704263/itgg.2006.1.2.44.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 INNOV0102_06-05-31_FINAL.qxd 6/6/2006 5:45 Página PM 60 James Levitt monitoring requirements.”37 The first of the two easement properties, located in Coos County in northern New Hampshire, is known as the Connecticut Lakes project. The second easement property, in the nearby “Northeast Kingdom” in the state of Vermont, is called the Hancock Forest Legacy Conservation project. Given their close proximity to one another, both tracts of land are covered by a single Landsat image, so the two legacy programs will be able to share the costs of acquir- ing images. list Lakes [I]n both the developed and the developing world, the monitoring technology may well prove to be of considerable value to those who are operating and regulating the increasing numbers of ecosystem service projects. As the Forest Legacy WFCEs prepared their monitoring protocols, they fol- lowed a path very like that used to prepare the Pingree monitoring protocol. Primero, detailed baseline conditions for each of the tracts were collected. Based in part on experience the Pingree group gained while developing its monitoring protocol, a checklist of baseline docu- ments was collected for the and Connecticut Hancock Forest Legacy proj- etc.. This included Landsat images of the tracts, taken both shortly before and shortly after the respective easements were initiated; aer- digital ial orthophoto quadrangles of the areas at easement initia- ción; digital elevation infor- formación; maps showing lease locations and boundaries; copies of forest lease documents; and forest management plans, si está disponible. Relevant forest attributes detailing each easement restriction for each site were identified and recorded. Próximo, four years (1999 a 2003) of Level 1 imagery were used to assess which attributes could best be tracked using medium-resolution satellite images. For the Hancock Forest Legacy property, the exercise showed that 11 de 16 attributes restricted by the easement could be monitored, at least in part, using Level 1 imagery. The remaining attributes, including billboard placement, waste disposal, topographical change, utility placement, and subdivision, would have to be monitored through site visits. While the ongoing effectiveness of the three-tiered monitoring protocol for the Connecticut Lakes and Hancock Forest Legacy projects is still being investigated, project managers report that the proto- cols developed will likely be implemented for long-term easement monitoring purposes. photos or As noted above, NEFF and a group of conservation partners (a local land trust, state and federal agencies, and an Indian tribe) have recently protected a second landscape-scale conservation area in Maine. That property, known as the Downeast Lakes project, forms the core of a nearly one-million-acre protected landscape that stretches from Washington County, Maine into New Brunswick, 60 innovaciones / primavera 2006 Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/1/2/44/704263/itgg.2006.1.2.44.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 INNOV0102_06-05-31_FINAL.qxd 6/6/2006 5:45 Página PM 61 Conservation via Satellite Canada. NEFF is currently preparing a protocol to use the three-tiered monitoring technology to monitor the Downeast Lakes tracts. Early reports are that the appli- cation of the technology to this multi-owner landscape is going smoothly. Experience with this multi-owner situation should give staff at NEFF and MIAL additional expertise they can apply to additional easement monitoring opportuni- ties that are being considered. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES AHEAD In 2004 y 2005, Steve Sader and Kenton Williams at MIAI, along with Chris Pryor and Frank Reed at NEFF, developed new capabilities for the three-tiered monitoring system, in conjunction with their work on the Connecticut Lakes and Hancock Legacy Forest easement monitoring protocols. These new capabilities make the technology more accessible to a wider range of users, including managers of small land trusts and comparable organizations that have limited access to information technology expertise.38 For example, field-based monitoring staff can now use handheld GPS and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) technologies to access from the field baseline GPS information for a given easement property, and enter new information into a GPS system based on new field observations. Even novice users unfamiliar with more complex GIS software (Por ejemplo, ArcGIS and ArcView from ESRI) can use free GIS software to enter and analyze field obser- vaciones. With modest technical assistance from local commercial service providers, non-profit GIS service providers, or universities, such novice users can layer their field-based observations onto Layer 1 and Layer 2 information to gain a more comprehensive view of easement property conditions over time. Such capabilities will only make the three-tiered system even more useful for those administering large-scale WFCEs. Beyond the opportunities to serve WFCEs, the three-tiered protocol has many other potential applications, including large easements that protect lands other than working forests. This has become particularly relevant in recent years, when United States Senate Finance Committee hearings on the regulation of easements and land trusts have led the land trust movement to adopt a new set of recom- mended standards and practices. These call for careful baseline documentation and systematic monitoring programs for all easements held by member organiza- tions of the Land Trust Alliance.39 In addition, in both the developed and the developing world, the monitoring technology may well prove to be of considerable value to those who are operating and regulating the increasing numbers of ecosystem service projects. These proj- ects provide valuable services, in exchange for payments from qualified buyers (such as governments, ONG, or private sector developers operating within cap- and-trade regulatory systems) to qualified sellers (such as quality-certified landowners and managers). Among the many services are wildlife conservation banks (reclaimed or unspoiled habitat for endangered or threatened wildlife species at an assured quality level); wetland mitigation banks (reclaimed or innovations / primavera 2006 61 Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/1/2/44/704263/itgg.2006.1.2.44.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 INNOV0102_06-05-31_FINAL.qxd 6/6/2006 5:45 Página PM 62 James Levitt such From the islands off the coast of India to the Siberian boreal forests … comprehensive monitoring technologies could help thinly stretched enforcement teams pinpoint ongoing poaching activities in widely-dispersed trouble spots and allocate on-site personnel accordingly. unspoiled wetlands at an assured quality level); carbon sequestration banks (sus- tainable managed forest or grassland ecosystems that store carbon that might oth- erwise be released into the atmosphere); and watershed protection districts. In Costa Rica, Por ejemplo, hillside farmers in districts surrounding hydroelectric projects are paid to keep steeply-sloped forested landscapes planted with trees, to prevent soil erosion that would ultimately impair the hydroelectric facility operat- ing in the valley below their farms. Such an application would be very fitting, given that before he worked on the Pingree project, MIAL’s Sader had paid particular attention to designing Rapid Assessment Program proto- cols for biodiversity-focused as organizations Conservation International. Asimismo, the monitor- ing protocols developed for the Pingree easement could also be quite valuable to those overseeing and enforc- ing land protection agree- ments for vast and remote national parks, national forests, and wildlife refuges that suffer from timber and wildlife poaching. From the islands off the coast of India to the Siberian boreal forests I mentioned at the beginning, comprehensive monitoring technologies could help thinly stretched enforcement teams pinpoint ongoing poaching activi- ties in widely-dispersed trouble spots and allocate on-site personnel accordingly. En tono rimbombante, the longitudinal records established by digitally recorded remote- sensing protocols could serve as strong and effective evidence in any legal proceed- ings where the history of change on the landscape is in some way disputed or uncertain. In this type of application, the use of such technologies could strength- en the efforts of organizations such as World Forest Watch to reduce graft and cor- ruption in the administration of timber concessions in regions where such prac- tices delay the emergence of fair and efficient market economies. Both NEFF and MIAL face a challenge in taking advantage of these myriad opportunities: how to sustain what largely remains a research and development oriented effort rooted in a university and a small non-profit. As the demand grows for Pingree-like monitoring services, it may be necessary to transfer some of the monitoring operations to an independent non-profit service bureau or a commer- cial enterprise that is organized and financed to pursue market opportunities. But such a transition has not yet proven practical. Amos Eno, executive direc- tor of NEFF from 2002 a 2005, enthusiastically supported such a transition. Con 62 innovaciones / primavera 2006 Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/1/2/44/704263/itgg.2006.1.2.44.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 INNOV0102_06-05-31_FINAL.qxd 6/6/2006 5:45 Página PM 63 Conservation via Satellite Eno’s recent departure from NEFF, and with NEFF now engaged in a search for a new executive director, the monitoring efforts are likely to continue to grow with- in their current organizational context for some time to come. KEY FACTORS FOR SUCCESS From the perspective of the protocol’s principal advocates and developers, as well as third parties that have evaluated a variety of WFCE monitoring protocols, the one developed by NEFF and MIAL for the Pingree project appears to have unique design, considerable utility, and genuine promise.40 At least three distinctive factors appear to be related to the success of the Pingree monitoring effort. Primero, the Pingree project’s efforts to develop a monitoring protocol, along with those by the Connecticut Lakes and Hancock Forest Legacy projects, have benefit- ed from the close professional attention of an uncommon mix of professionals from the non-profit, academic, privado, and public sectors. Experienced profes- sionals from well-respected organizations—NEFF, the University of Maine, Seven Islands and the U.S. Forest Service—collaborated on the specification of required baseline documents and methods to monitor change over time, allowing the mon- itoring protocol to benefit both from years of experience and a cross-cutting per- perspectiva. Similarmente, the protocol has benefited from being submitted in a variety of forums to peer review. Segundo, the protocol benefits from relatively generous amounts of funding provided for technical development, professional review, and information dissem- ination. Without the non-profit and public sector grants that funded the early pro- tocol development, MIAL and NEFF would not have been able to complete pre- liminary and full-scale testing of the protocol. Similarmente, the relatively generous funding of the stewardship fund itself will allow NEFF to continue monitoring and process improvement for many years into the future. This is in stark contrast to the monitoring budgets set aside for many other conservation easements, which are typically modest in comparison to the Pingree easement monitoring budget, or— all too often—non-existent. Tercero, the Pingree easement monitoring effort benefited from the persistence of conservationists who have worked at overall project fundraising and develop- ment for more than a decade. Their persistence was fueled in part by the knowl- edge that if they reached their goals for fundraising and technology development, they would be setting a nationally (and perhaps internationally) important prece- dent both for the size of a WFCE, and for the way in which that WFCE was stew- arded over time. IS THIS AN IMPORTANT INNOVATION IN CONSERVATION STEWARDSHIP? Now that the Pingree project has made impressive progress towards successfully implementing the three-tiered monitoring protocol, a critical question remains: is innovations / primavera 2006 63 Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/1/2/44/704263/itgg.2006.1.2.44.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 INNOV0102_06-05-31_FINAL.qxd 6/6/2006 5:45 Página PM 64 James Levitt this an innovation of lasting importance for conservation stewardship practition- ers around the globe, or will it have only a modest and transitory impact? Five cri- teria, discussed in greater depth in recent publications on conservation innova- ción,41 can be usefully applied to weigh the question. Específicamente, is this initiative: novedoso, showing a spark of creativity in conception; significant from a policy or orga- nizational strategy point of view; measurably effective, using an objective, india- pendently applied metric; and transferable, from one jurisdiction, city, state or nation to another? Y, perhaps most important for conservationists, does it show the promise of enduring over the course of decades and human lifetimes? The Pingree protocol monitoring effort is indeed novel. The protocol devel- oped for monitoring the Pingree easement, while based on substantial work regarding the use of remote sensing to track land use change, is the first applica- tion of its kind used on a landscape-scale Working Forest Conservation Easement, or any other very large scale private land protection initiative in the U.S. Is the initiative significant? It clearly proved to be significant for NEFF, which found it to be a unique way for a very small land conservation organization to monitor landscape change over a very broad, dispersed territory. The willingness of the USFS to invest in the technology on a Forest Legacy project further argues for its significance. The measurable effectiveness of the protocol is demonstrated by its reported accuracy in tracking changes in the landscape without major errors, in an increas- ingly cost-effective way. It is important to note that the protocol has not yet achieved targets for annual costs per acre. It will not be entirely successful, in the context of the Pingree project, until it brings annual monitoring costs down to about 6 cents per acre, or the total of about $50,000 per year that the project can
support over the long term with its million-dollar stewardship endowment.
As for transferability, the protocol has already been deployed by NEFF for the
Connecticut Lakes and Hancock Forest Legacy projects, as well as the Downeast
Lakes project. The big unanswered question here is whether or not the protocol
will be used by other organizations outside of New England to annually monitor
large easement tracts.
The three-tiered monitoring developed for the Pingree project has a good
chance of enduring over time if it can continue to reduce its costs per acre, y
successfully transfer its technology to a wide variety of large and small land con-
servation organizations. While components of the protocol may change, it is like-
ly to remain an attractive monitoring scheme for many years to come, given its
combination of satellite/aerial based scans and well-planned field visits linked to
high-capacity GIS systems. En efecto, as developing conservation community stan-
dards call for frequent monitoring of easement requirements, there may be few, si
cualquier, practical alternatives for monitoring easements of greater than 50,000 acres in
the future.
En suma, the three-tiered monitoring protocol developed for the Pingree proj-
ect shows good promise of qualifying as an important conservation innovation,
but to do so it must continue to make progress on costs and technology transfer to
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Conservation via Satellite
outside organizations.
As Teddy Roosevelt indicated nearly a century ago, conserved lands that are
not actively monitored and protected are likely to be greatly diminished in value.
In contrast, competent, accurate, and efficient stewardship can go a long way
toward assuring that such lands can continue to provide vital ecosystem services
long into the future. They can continue to provide wildlife habitat, filter drinking
agua, sequester carbon, and supply beauty for us, our children, and our children’s
niños. Roosevelt would likely have high praise for the developers of the moni-
toring protocol described here. They have shown at least one pathway for applying
modern information technology to the considerable conservation challenges of
our age, bringing conservation practice into the 21st century.
Agradecimientos
The author would like to thank Winthrop Carty, Tim Ingraham, Frank Reed,
Keith Ross, Steve Sader and Peter Stein for their careful review of the manuscript.
We invite reader comments. Correo electrónico
1 Stuart Chape, Simon Blyth, et al., compilers, 2003 United Nations List of Protected Areas. IUCN-
The World Conservation Union/UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Gland,
Switzerland and Cambridge, Reino Unido, 2003, available at
2 El 2003 total area of protected areas, reported by the IUCN to be about 18.8 million square
kilometers, is only slightly smaller than the combined surface areas of the United States and
Canada (9.631 million km2 plus 9.976 km2 respectively, for a total of 19.607 km2). Surface areas are
reported by Wikipedia, en
3 For information on Pingree easement photographs, contact Cynthia Henshaw at the New
England Forestry Foundation, (978) 952-6856 x110,
4 Ver, Por ejemplo, “Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Cameroon Ministry of
Forests and WRI-GFW,” June 16, 2005, available via the Global Forest Watch website at
5 Theodore Roosevelt Association, “Life of Theodore Roosevelt: Conservationist,” available at
6 Bill Hartwig, Chief, A NOSOTROS. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Letter from the Chief,” on U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service: America’s National Wildlife Refuge System, available at
7 Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, 1913, included in Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders,
An Autobiography (Nueva York: Library of America, 2004), pag. 682. A similar discussion of Roosevelt’s
establishment of the Pelican Island reserve appears in James N. Levitt, editor, From Walden to Wall
Calle: Frontiers of Conservation Finance (Washington, CORRIENTE CONTINUA.: Island Press), 2005.
8 Theodore Roosevelt, A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open, 1916, available at
9 Sanctuary Asia, Junio 2001, Interview with “Alok Saxena, Protector of Paradise,” available at
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James Levitt
10 WWF, “Anti-Timber-Poaching Brigade in Siberia: Project Details,” available at
11 Ver, Por ejemplo, information regarding Congo Basin Forest Partnership, sponsored by USAID
and more than a dozen other governmental and non-governmental organizations at
12 Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, “Law Enforcement: Big Game Season A Challenging
Time for Vermont Game Wardens,” copyright 2003-2004, available online at
13 Sections of this paper regarding the Pingree project are adapted from “The Next Level: el
Pingree Forest Partnership as a Private Lands Conservation Innovation,” by James N. Levitt,
Octubre 2003, The Program on Conservation Innovation Occasional Paper 03-01, Harvard Forest,
Harvard University, available online at
14 Catherine Hahn, “Monitoring Easements,” The Timberline, New England Forestry Foundation,
2000, pag. 10.
15 Steven A. Sader, Keith Ross, and Frank C. Reed, “Pingree Forest Partnership: Monitoring
Easements at the Landscape Level,” Journal of Forestry, April/May 2002, pag. 22.
16 Levitt, pag. 5.
17 Scientific Certification Systems, Public Summary Report for the Five-Year Re-evaluation of Seven
Islands Land Management Company of the Pingree Family Ownership, Bangor, A MÍ. SCS, Emeryville,
California. Awarded June 2000 (with subsequent annual updates), available at
18 Amos Eno, “Breaking New Ground: The Pingree Forest Partnership,” The Timberline, Nuevo
England Forestry Foundation, 2000, pag. 8. Eno here refers to the following document: Maine State
Planning Office—Land for Maine’s Future Program, “State of Maine: Status and Strategy for
Monitoring Publicly-Held Conservation Easements, Phase I," Octubre 1998.
19 Eno, pag. 8.pag.
20 Sader, ross, and Reed, 2002, pag. 22.
21 Sader, ross, and Reed, 2002, pag. 25.
22 A sampling of Steven Sader’s remote sensing related professional publications since the mid-
1980s is available at
23 Sader, ross, and Reed, 2002; see Steven A. Sader, Matthew Bertrand and Emily Hoffhine
wilson, “Satellite Change Detection of Forest Harvest Patterns on an Industrial Forest Landscape,"
in Forest Science, 49(3), 2003, páginas. 341-353.
24 Keith Ross, Steven A. Sader, and Frank Reed, “Monitoring Large-Scale Conservation Easements:
the Pingree Easement,” Session 4H at the Land Trust Alliance Rally 2002, austin, Texas, disponible
online from
título, at the LTA Rally 2003 in Sacramento, California.
25 Sader, ross, and Reed, 2002, pag. 22.
26 Pingree Associates and the New England Forestry Foundation, “Conservation Easement on
Land of Six Rivers Limited Partnership, et al., located in the Counties of Aroostook, franklin,
Oxford, Penobscot, Pisquitaquis and Somerset, State of Maine, Granted to New England Forestry
Base, Cª, in Levitt, 2002, Apéndice A, pag. A1.
27 Levitt, Apéndice A, pag. A6, Sección 3.4.
28 Sader, Reed and Ross, 2002, pag. 23.
29 Landsat-7 Thematic Mapper images were initially used for this application. In May 2003, cómo-
alguna vez, the LandSat 7 satellite had a catastrophic failure and has stopped sending back reliable
imagery. For the time being, LandSat 5, an older but still operational satellite, continues to provide
suitable images for Level 1-type monitoring. For more information on the availability of Landsat
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Conservation via Satellite
images, ver
30 Ver, Por ejemplo, information on NASA’s Land Cover/Land Use Change program, available at
31 Ver, Por ejemplo, S.A. Sader, D.J. Hayes, METRO. Coan, J.A.. Hepinstall and C. Soza, “Forest Change
Monitoring of a Remote Biosphere Reserve,” in International Journal of Remote Sensing, 22(10),
2001, páginas. 1937-1950.
32 ross, Sader. and Reed, 2002, pag. 4. See also Sader, Bertrand, and Wilson, op cit.
33 See Pingree Associates and the New England Forestry Foundation in Levitt, 2002, Apéndice A,
page A23. The “Clearcutting” provision in the Easement Exhibit C (“Landowner and Forest
Management Guidelines”) states that “Grantor will strive to maintain no more than 3% del
Property in clear-cut condition except that 7% of additional acres may be clear-cut as long as
every acre clear-cut in excess of the 3% base limit is matched with an acre of land that was planted
or pre-commercially thinned in the previous year.” The provision goes on to enumerate the pur-
poses for which clear-cutting may be employed, such as plantation harvest.
34 ross, Sader, and Reed, 2002, pag. 4.
35 Robert J. Hrubes, Forest Management and Stump-to-Forest Gate Chain of Custody Certification
Evaluation Report for the Pingree Lands Managed by Seven Islands Company, SCS Forest
Conservation Program, Updated November 2005, pag. 31, available at
36 Comparables information provided by Peter Stein, Lyme Timber Company (private communi-
catión, Febrero 2006).
37 Steven Sader, Kenton Williams, and Frank Reed, “Monitoring Protocol and Analysis: Hancock
Forest Legacy Conservation Easement—Northeast Kingdom, Vermont,” in draft form, 9/9/05.
38 Kenton Williams, Steven A. Sader, Christopher Pryor and Frank Reed, “Application of
Geospatial Technology to Monitor Forest Legacy Conservation Easements, Journal of Forestry, en
prensa, 2006.
39 For more information on Land Trust Alliance (LTA) standards and practices, see the LTA’s web-
site at
40 See various publications by Reed, ross, and Sader, Listado arriba. See also A. Block, k. Hartigan,
R. Heiser, et al., “Trends in easement language and the status of current monitoring on working
forest conservation easements,” University of Michigan School of Natural Resources Master’s
Thesis, 2004, available online at
41 James N. Levitt, “Conservation Innovation in America: Past, Present and Future,” Occasional
Paper Series (OPS 02-03), Institute for Government Innovation, Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, December 2002.
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