This is the Home Page of the biggest community mapping exercise ever undertaken for conservation.
The MAPA Project will make Africa's conservation areas more visible, accessible and secure by creating a digital archive of the boundaries, roads and infrastructure for over 1,000 conservation areas.
So what are we doing here? Why bother flying halfway across the world?
We’ve said this to distraction: we firmly believe that the MAPA Project will not be sustainable, accurate and relevant unless it is ultimately authored by people doing the work in the field: conservationists themselves. So we came to the biggest meeting of conservation professionals on the planet to introduce our project to this community, and ask for their help in developing it.
At the same time, we’ve realized that there are many people in other parts of the world trying to do much the same as we are – there can be no doubt that there is a pressing need to organize information in conservation and visualize it to the public, policy makers, conservation managers – and each other. We came to learn from everyone who is in this business of visualizing and organizing conservation information – and so far we are barely keeping up.
To give a (very brief!) introduction to the project I delivered a four minute speed-presentation on Sunday morning. The PowerPoint of this presentation can be downloaded here. If you are at the conference – we’d love to talk to you. Please send me an email at alta@mapaproject.org or find me in the exhibit hall at tea or during lunch if you have comments, suggestions, a project to put up, information on protected areas or if you have any questions about the project whatsoever.
Hi, the time has finally come for us to recruit some more mapping volunteers. We will be recruiting approximately 20 2-person teams to drive MAPA vehicles through West Africa.This is very exciting for us and means that Phase 2 is really underway.
Click on the “Volunteer Now!” menu option at the top (or left hand side) of this page to read more.
You can download an application form from the Volunteer Now! page. If you have any questions please contact me via the Contact Us page.
When we first started building the database, we thought that we had made it pretty easy for conservationists to add their projects…but not everyone agreed. Thanks to your comments, we realized that it wasn’t all that intuitive to navigate around the database, and that not having automatic registration was slowing people down. Furthermore, once you added your project, you had to wait for us to activate it before you could edit it again.
We are very pleased to announce that those problems are now a thing of the past. Here are some changes that you can expect to see:
Automatic Registration
In the past you’ve had to email us for a username and password. You can now do this automatically (here), enabling you to log in immediately to add your project record.
See your own content
One problem we ran into fairly soon was that it was difficult to find your own content in between everyone else’s on the database. Now when you log in you’ll be taken to your contributions (see below). You can still associate wildlife species, organizations, videos, articles and blogs added by other people. We are working on making it easier to find content amongst this content too.
Add videos, wildlife, footprints, articles and organizations easily
To add rich content (like videos) to your bubble you had to log out of your record and go to the listing of that content type, before returning to your project record to associate it. You now no longer have to log out of your record, and can move easily between the different tabs to add wildlife species, articles, footprints, videos and organizations to your project bubble.
New activation routine
To make sure that we only get conservation added to the layer, we set up the database so that every record added needed to be authorized by an administrator before appearing on Google Earth. The problem was that one a project was added, it would disappear to the user until activated by an administrator. In creating the “my contributions” page, we have done away with this step from a user’s point of view. Your project won’t appear on the “live layer” (this is not up yet, but will be very soon) until activated by an administrator, but you can edit your content as much as you like.
More help material
In an attempt to make the database more user-friendly, we have embedded instructions in the database itself. We hope that this will make it possible for people to quickly and easily create their bubbles without having to read through tedious instructions. We do appreciate that instructions may still be useful, though, so we have made a revised PDF document and a slideshow available to you on this website.
We hope that you find these changes helpful! Please let us know what you like and don’t like about the new-look database, and feel free to suggest other ways in which we can make it easier for third parties to add projects. We have plenty in store for the database, the layer and the website over the next few months, and we’ll keep you updated as to those developments. More news soon!
You might get sick of us saying this, but we’ll probably say it quite a few times still: the story of conservation in Africa is not one that the MAPA Project can tell! We’re providing the pin- board, but the story of conservation in Africa should be told by conservationists themselves.
However, in the process of building the pin-board (with enormous assistance from Google Earth Outreach , we might add), we’ve been introduced to many great ways to tell stories on Google Earth, and we wanted to share these tools with other conservationists. Not only for them to tell their stories on the MAPA layer, but also on their websites and blogs, in public talks, presentations and reports.
With this in mind, and armed with the Google Earth- and -Maps training we received in Kampala and Nairobi in October and November last year, we put together our first mini-training with a small group of local conservationists at the University of Cape Town.
On the 7th of May we introduced these eight conservationists (and a few other people listening in) to the basics of creating content in Google Earth and Google Maps. As far as possible we stuck to examples that the attendees were familiar with: their own work!
Just add conservationists. The venue just before the start of training.
Erick showing us how to add GIS content into Google Earth.
In the workshop we covered the basics of navigating in Google Earth, annotating Google Earth with points, lines and polygons and dressing these up with pictures and videos. We added image-, photo- and screen overlays, and learned how to create narrated tours in Google Earth (like the example below – one that we actually started creating in the workshop).
Later in the day we also spent some more hands-on time in Google Maps and Fusion tables, with two very basic exercises in using Google My Maps to create a custom map, and Fusion tables to merge two datasets and map primate field sites in Africa. We also spent some time learning how to embed content created in Google Earth, Google Maps and Fusion tables in websites and blogs.
If you want to see who attended the workshop, what we got up to, and what material we created in and after the workshop, you can visit our workshop site here. You’ll find links to all the tutorials we worked through in the workshop, as well as links to many more resources from Google Earth Outreach.
Are you interested in knowing how to use Google Earth to illustrate your conservation project or area? Contact us and let us know – we can’t promise to host a workshop in your neighborhood (we’ll try!), but at a minimum we will be more than happy to help you create your story, and point you in the direction of more help material.
If you already have material in. kml- or .kmz format, why not upload it as part of your project to the MAPA layer? When you add a project, we will give you the option to associate a “footprint”, which can be any content that tells a story in Google Earth…be it an image overlay, a tour, an animal track, a species range or even a mini layer!
A final note from our side: Thank you to everybody who participated in the workshop, especially Andrea Plos who made sure that technical hiccups didn’t scupper the day. Also a big thank you to Julie Sohn from Google and the Google Outreach team for their incredible support in helping us to pull off the first of hopefully many interactive days with conservationists working across Africa.
In the last few weeks, we’ve been so encouraged by the number of conservationists who have come on board to help make the layer better. We’d like to share three of these stories with you, although there are certainly many more to tell.
The people working in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique saw Gorongosa on the layer and wanted to improve it. So they went and did just that, providing us with new polygons for the park, and adding more videos and text to the bubbles. Once we go live (more on that soon) the information you see for Gorongosa National Park will be the information added by the people from Gorongosa National Park. A big thank you to Franziska Steinbruck and Vasco Galante for getting in touch with us.
Another example of conservationists showing us the way, is Silvia Weel who contacted us from the PRESENCE initiative – a trans-disciplinary catchment restoration initiative in the Baviaanskloof Mega-reserve involving, amongst others, the Dutch Government, Working for Wetlands/Water/Woodlands, several South African universities, and the Eastern Cape Parks. The Baviaanskloof Mega-reserve wasn’t even on the MAPA layer when Silvia first contacted us. Thanks to her that has now been remedied. Silvia also added all the work that PRESENCE do as a project to the database. This too will be on the new layer.
Another conservationists that has talking to MAPA recently is Louis Liebenberg, of Cybertracker fame. CyberTracker has done some amazing work in the field of animal tracking, their free software having been downloaded more than 40000 times in over 190 countries. Louis recently attended our Google Earth/Google Maps workshop, and was encouraged by the possibilities of the MAPA layer as an information portal. Thanks to some really encouraging discussions with him, we have now been armed with many great ideas on how we could use the layer and the database as an information tool and make them more interactive. By the way – we’ll give you a full low-down on the workshop soon – an event we very much enjoyed.
These stories are merely a selection of all the help and input that we have received, and they illustrate what MAPA is all about – a collaborative effort to tell the story of conservation in Africa. As more people are climbing on board we are finding areas that we can improve on, new ideas for how to apply the project for more people’s benefit and more ways in which conservationists can communicate and work together. Please contact us with your comments, ideas, suggestions, and problems. Add your conservation project, encourage others to add theirs and help us develop a way for conservationists to talk to each other and the world about the work they do to preserve Africa’s priceless natural heritage.
In November MAPA volunteers will be working in West Africa, visiting parks and reserves across the region with their GPS units and their cameras.
One of the most time-consuming things on this project has been establishing partnerships with national wildlife authorities. Getting the appointments, exchanging letters of co-operation, and everything else that goes with it, all takes time and money. It’s always worth it in the end because we get so much support from Wardens and Rangers on the ground – but the paperwork and protocol and can be exhausting! One way to fast track the process is to collaborate with a local NGO which has national credibility and the contacts.
A fragment of protected forest near Lagos, Nigeria
So we have been very lucky to be working with the Nigerian Conservation Foundation in Nigeria. They are the most senior conservation NGO in the country and have taken a huge load off our shoulders. When I visited Lagos recently, they undertook to manage all liaison with the Nigeria National Parks Service and to support the project on the ground.
Once again I am reminded by how many people there are on this continent who are cheerfully shouldering the immense responsibility of looking after its wildlife – and still have time to help others!
Damola Ogunsesan at Lekki Conservation Centre, Headquarters of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation.
MAPA will work in Nigeria, with two dedicated vehicles, in November 2010. We look forward to meeting again!
The MAPA Project will be presenting and attending the ICCB in Edmonton, Canada between the 3rd and 7th of July 2010. We are hoping to use this opportunity to tell the conservation community about MAPA and about the ways in which we can help pin conservation in Africa on the map.
We’re also hoping to learn about ways in which we can improve the project to be more interactive, more user-friendly and ultimately, more useful.
Now that the skeleton is slowly coming together (you’ll have to wait just a little while longer for the new layer to go public), we are starting to move our attention more and more to conservation projects. In addition to offering a window on African conservation to the world, we are working on ways in which we can help researchers connect with and learn from each other and make their work even more visible. However, as always, we need the guidance of conservationists in this.
If you are going to be in attendance at the ICCB, please let us know – we’d love to meet up with you, learn about the work that you are doing in Africa, help you put your project on the map, and learn about ways in which we can improve the MAPA Project to suit your needs.
It’s nearing on two months since the last version of our layer was published, and on that occasion we hinted that we were working on moving to a “live” layer. Having a live layer means that we will be able to make any updates and new entries to the database public at any time – so if you added your project today, you wouldn’t have to wait for a few weeks to see it appear on Google Earth, but would see it the very next day.
We are now getting much closer to having that layer. We anticipate that the process will take a couple of weeks to complete still, but we can scarcely wait to show you the new map! We’ve done our best to improve content where you’ve told us to, and the layer is much better off for it – thank you! Please keep sending in suggestions, comments, corrections and of course: content!
We don’t want to give too much away just yet, but at a minimum you can expect much improved content for southern and east Africa, and a substantial number of new protected areas for central and west Africa.
We’re pleased to announce that we’ll be hosting a mini-workshop with a small group of conservationists in Cape Town on Friday, the 7th of May 2010 at the University of Cape Town. The objective of the workshop will be to introduce these biologists to ways in which they can use Google’s Geo tools to illustrate their work to the general public and to gauge ways in which we can improve the ways that the MAPA project is serving the conservation community.
After an introduction session covering the various tools on offer, the workshop will take a case-study approach and we will spend the rest of the day creating material that can be used by these conservationists in public talks, their websites, and of course: their project postings on the MAPA layer.
Due to us using this case-study approach, there are severe space limitations, and as a result this workshop is already completely full, but we encourage anyone that would benefit from a similar exercise to get in touch with us. We can’t promise that we’ll be able to physically come to you, but at a minimum, we can direct you to tutorials and examples, and share our own experiences with you.
Illustrating data collected from collared baboons like Force, shown here, will feature strongly in the workshop.
The idea for hosting workshops amongst conservationists was borne out of our own experiences at the Google Earth Outreach workshops in Kampala and Nairobi in October and November 2009. We were amazed at how well this platform works for illustrating phenomena like animal movement through time and space, wildlife distributions and environmental change and how easy it was to illustrate these – even with no technical or GIS training.
Illustrating these stories is what the MAPA layer is all about, but we don’t have the capacity or the knowledge to tell that story ourselves. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record – the MAPA project belongs to everyone in conservation!
By passing on the skills and knowledge that we acquired in Kampala and Nairobi, we hope that conservationists will be able to better use the MAPA layer as a platform to tell their stories. We also hope that they’ll be empowered to use Google’s Geo tools for the benefit of spreading their message using other public platforms, like websites, blogs, public talks and even scientific papers.
How can we tell the public about Great White shark movement in False Bay? (Photo: www.saveourseas.com)
Whereas we want to help as much as possible, all the information that you need to get started is already available at your fingertips! Google Earth Outreach has a series of tutorials for all levels of Google Earth and Google Maps users. These offer step-for-step guidance to help you get the most out of Google Earth and -Maps for your cause. Explore ways in which you can make your work more visible today, and don’t forget to add your project to the MAPA layer while you’re at it!
As we mentioned in our newsletter a few weeks ago, we’re committed to having accurate information on protected areas on the MAPA Google Earth layer. Phase one of the project saw many volunteers visiting protected areas in southern and east Africa, and as such we got a little bit of a feel for areas that we were writing about for the layer. Even so, we still got some information wrong, and some protected areas are not as well represented as they should be. For phase two, we are doing things the other way around: we’re starting with the desktop research and will be following with the on-the-ground mapping, thus providing an even larger initial window for errors to creep in.
The only way that protected areas will be well-represented across Africa is if the stories of these areas are told by people who really know them. A case in point: a few weeks ago we received an email from Dr. Colleen Begg from the Niassa Carnivore project. The Beggs have gone out of their way to add their information on the MAPA layer, despite having very limited internet access. Upon reviewing the information on the MAPA layer, Dr. Begg immediately noticed some errors on the Niassa National Reserve bubble. These errors will hopefully be corrected, preferably by staff of the Niassa National Reserve when we publish the next version of the layer.
This post is specifically directed at people like Dr. Begg: researchers and conservationists actively doing research in parks, park managers, rangers – we’re looking for 3rd party guardians for the protected areas on the layer. People who can adopt an area they know inside out and who can ensure that they are really well represented on the layer. It doesn’t require a lot of work and will ensure that the MAPA layer moves one step closer to telling the story of conservation in Africa. If you know such a person, or are such a person, please contact us.
Chimanimani National Reserve, Mozambique: Can you help us improve this information?
If you are a phase one volunteer, please have a look at the protected areas that you visited and verify that we did it justice on the map. If you have any information to add, any extra or better pictures, any corrections, or can suggest good contacts to be 3rd party guardians, please get in contact.
