(NewsNation) – Scientists are using NASA satellite images and the computing power of Google Earth Engine to develop a real-time monitoring system for Tiger habitats.

According to the World Wildlife FundThe number of wild tigers has been declining for about a century. While the numbers are beginning to rise, the WWF notes that there are only about 5,575 tigers left in the world and that “much more work is needed to protect this species.”

But now, that US Department of Agriculture says there has been a “breakthrough” with TCL 3.0, a program that combines space technology and “on-site data collection” to monitor tigers.

“This is a way to both look at the big picture and recognize changes on the ground as they occur,” says Eric W. Sanderson, vice president of urban conservation at the New York Botanical Garden and lead author of a study on tiger conservation published in December, it said in a statement. “The ultimate goal is to monitor changes in real time to help stabilize tiger populations across their range.”

TCL 3.0 specifically looks at tigers, whose ancestors first appeared in Eurasia 62 million years ago. These tigers have historically been found from the Caspian Sea to the Russian Far East and south to the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali.

The total area of ​​TCLs or Tiger Conservation Landscapes has declined from 1.025 million to about 912,000 square kilometers between 2001 and 2020. This represents an area-wide loss of 11%, with the largest losses occurring in Southeast Asia and southern China.

About 63 TCLs are spread across 10 countries. India is home to about 3,000 of the world’s remaining tiger species across 35 landscapes.

Tiger habitat expansion has occurred in India, Nepal, Bhutan, northern China and southeastern Russia, demonstrating that there is potential for expanding tiger ranges in restoration landscapes.

“If there were enough prey in these habitats and tigers were sustainably resettled, the area occupied by tigers could increase by 50%, the researchers found,” a USDA press release said.

A main reason for the commitment of “Panthera Tigris,” the largest cat on earth, is the loss of its habitat, the USDA wrote.

To counteract this, it is important to know where and when habitat loss occurs, the authors wrote in December.

However, until now there has been no way to measure and monitor changes in the condition of tigers and their habitat or to continuously update the data.

But now Laura Rogers, the associate program manager of NASA’s Ecological Conservation Program, said Earth observation products such as VIIRS, MODIS and Landsat products “holistically capture the impacts of human activities” on critical habitats so they can then change their management approaches.

The analysis systems provide information to countries to help them conserve their tiger populations, such as priority landscapes that need protection and changes in habitat extent and quality. This creates an “early warning system” for interventions or habitat degradation.

TCL 3.0 also analyzes the “human footprint”, an index of the impact of people on a landscape. This all gives scientists a “real-time assessment” of what is happening to forest ecosystems in Asia.

“The system-wide view that TCL 3.0 provides is a groundbreaking innovation that will enable the tiger species to thrive,” said Rogers.