=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1498/HAICTA_2015_paper54
|storemode=property
|title=Bird Watching and Ecotourism: An Innovative Monitoring System to Project the Species of Lesvos Island to Potential Ecotourists
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1498/HAICTA_2015_paper54.pdf
|volume=Vol-1498
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/ChatzigeorgiouS15
}}
==Bird Watching and Ecotourism: An Innovative Monitoring System to Project the Species of Lesvos Island to Potential Ecotourists==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1498/HAICTA_2015_paper54.pdf
Bird Watching and Ecotourism:
An Innovative Monitoring System to Project the Species
of Lesvos Island to Potential Ecotourists
Chryssoula Chatzigeorgiou1, Ioanna Simelli2, Apostolos Tsagaris3
1
Department of Agricultural Technology, Alexander Technological Educational Institute of
Thessaloniki, Greece, e-mail: chrxatz@farm.teithe.gr
2
Management of Information Systems, University of Macedonia, Greece,
e-mail: ioanna.simeli@gmail.com,
3
Department of Automation, Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki,
Greece, e-mail: tsagaris@autom.teithe.gr
Abstract. Ecotourists have high potentials to spread ecological awareness,
while they maintain quality tourism and learn how to respect and preserve the
natural environment. Knowledge is an important prerequisite to predict future
attitudes and connect tourists with nature. Ecotourism focuses on areas with
rare flora and fauna. Lesvos Island hosts rare species which attract numbers of
bird watchers yearly. The current paper presents an innovative system that may
record the movements of the birds and transmit the data to a mobile application
available to potential tourists.
Keywords: birdwatching, ecotourism, innovation, Lesvos.
1 Introduction
Lesvos Island has been known to birdwatchers for the presence of two rare species:
Sitta Krueperi and Emberiza Cineracea. The great variety of wetlands as well as its
location in Eastern Meditteranean make Lesvos Island a unique destination for birds.
Thus, Lesvos has the richest bird fauna of all the Aegean islands. Greece in general
hosts around 449 bird species, more than 300 of which have been observed on
Lesvos Island (Dudley, 2015).
Ecotourism can improve and disseminate the nature and culture of an area while it
can be divided into active and passive ecotourism. Active ecotourism is when people
try to improve or save the environment and make it healthier, but passive is
considered when person wants to relax and seeks to minimize to damage the area. In
short, ecotourism contributes in the interaction between humans and nature and help
to acquire much awareness and understanding of the area, plus it helps to improve
peoples’ attitudes and behaviors towards natural environment (Cini et al., 2015).
Moreover the bio-cultural information should be provided to all people who take
part in it. Within this framework, an innovative system is proposed to monitor the
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activity of the birds on the protected area. A network of wireless cameras is set to
capture the usual or the migrating movements of the birds and simultaneously upload
the data on an application allowing the registered users to comment on the picture.
Furthermore, the users will be allowed to upload their own pictures from birds they
watch so as to either be approved as a rare bird after the review of the Lesvos Bird
Records Committee (Hellenic Rarities Committee, 2009) or accept the comments of
the other users.
2 State of the Art
2.1 SCADA Systems
The suggested platform consists of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
(SCADA) system for the collection of the required information. SCADA systems
collect data from sensors, communicate the acquired data, present them and finally
use them mainly on the supervisory level (Daneels & Salter, 1999). Wireless sensors
are used in numerous scientific fields like agriculture, nursing, medicine etc
(Rehmann et al., 2014; Huang et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2014).
Should the collection of data, in order to assess the performance of a system, is not
an option, SCADA systems become useful and while, in the beginning, they were
considered as a technical engineering tool, they eventually evolved to a key tool for
decision makers within organizations. Among SCADA capabilities, the one that
stands out is that they control complex processes without the need for specialist
human resources (Asgarkhani & Sitnikova, 2014).
In technologically advanced countries, particularly the USA and countries of
Western Europe, the need for monitoring parameters associated with environmental
quality characteristics and especially the quality of water has been extensively
recognized. For this purpose, several programs of automatic measurement of
qualitative characteristics and analyses of results have been installed, which help in
the development of agriculture (Gross Kopf William, 2001).
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are being widely
used in agricultural applications and specifically in irrigation management systems,
where an intelligent use of the water is required. Molina et al (2014) propose an
application developed with LabVIEW graphical programming language, complex
mathematical models for irrigation, data sampling. The use of a data acquisition card
for collecting data from transducers and for the activation of the actuators makes it
possible to apply the implemented platform both to a real irrigation system and to the
developed scale model, supplying the students with a more practical application of
the learned concepts. At the same time an educational platform for the design of
SCADA applications for irrigation programming combined with a scale model of a
trickle irrigation system is proposed from the researchers.
Vera-Repullo et al (2015) provide a SCADA system to optimize irrigation using
weighing lysimeters in a potted crop. The software was programmed in a compact
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embedded controller using the LabVIEW graphical programming language with the
Real-Time module. This controller receives data from the lysimeters throughout a
Modbus/RS-485 communication network, processes them and realizes the
calculations to control the irrigation valves in real time.
Tsagaris and Hatzikos (2014) propose an innovative system that monitors and
controls the water quality, both surface as well as groundwater and sea. Developed
using the PLC and SCADA technologies, it is a sophisticated way to provide timely
and reliable information and it is a necessary tool for public services, local
authorities, scientific institutions and private companies that manage, control and / or
use any form of water resources such as lakes and watersheds, rivers or streams, sea
and groundwater. The system monitors the environmental, hydrological and
meteorological conditions in real time with a wireless communication system for
instant information and timely anticipation. It consists of a local control station
located in the field of interest, which hosts various sensors for measuring water
quality and meteorological parameters and a data collection central station which
collects sensor readings, stores them persistently, it allows users to visualize, and
finally regulate and receive alerts when certain metrics exceed some predefined
limits.
2.2 Ecotourism - Bird Watching
Ecotourism has not yet been clearly defined. A number of studies were conducted
in order to come up with a definition widely accepted. It is an alternative form of
tourism (Fennell, 2008) focusing on the need for "clean"environment, alternative
form of holidays linked to nature, that respects the local hosting community's needs.
The typology of hardcore ecotourists frames tourists with special interests oriented
to nature and ecology (Fennell, 2008). The most common form of ecotourism is the
observation of flora and fauna (birdwatching is part of this observation), visiting
national forests etc (Chatzigeorgiou, 2009).
Ecotourism develops in areas of spectacular beauty and wealthy natural resources.
It is directly linked to sustainability since the preservation of the environment, the
culture and the community of every area are the pillars of ecotourism development
(Hall & Boyde, 2005).
The island of Lesvos is the 3rd biggest island of Greece located on the
NorthEastern Aegean Sea. The Gulf of Kalloni is one of the two main gulfs of the
island where there are many wetlands and a "house" of rare birds. Alykes wetlands,
when flooded, are a real magnet for birds and birders. 332 species have been
recorded from the island as at 31 December 2014 while there are species of
dragonflies and butterflies, rare reptiles and amphibians, and mammals. Finally,
Lesvos is an island with explicit flora and rare orchids (Dudley, 2015).
Like other bird populations worldwide, there are birds on Lesvos island that are at
risk of extinction and their conservation relies heavily on protected area networks.
Ecotourism to these areas generates revenue to contribute to the species' conservation
(Steven et al., 2013). Limited research has been carried out on the impact of tourism
on bird populations, whereas extensive discussion has been devoted on sustainable
development (Collins-Kreiner et al., 2013).
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To sum up, the typology of bird watchers according to Vayanni et al., (2005), is
people of middle age, well educated, individual tourists who spend more money than
an average tourist and whose main concern is the preservation of the environment.
3 Proposed System
The paper proposes the implementation of an environmental monitoring network,
which will monitor the environment of the target area, capture the movements of the
birds, update the records of rare birds and simultaneously upload the pictures
captured to a database available to any potential visitor of the area. At the same time,
visitors will also be able to upload their own pictures to the database so as to submit
them for approval by the LBRC.
The proposed system includes the installation of a network of wireless cameras in
combination with meteorological stations. The cameras' objective will be the
recording of the birds' activities in the protected area while the stations in
combination with the hydrological stations will gather data concerning the
environmental conditions of the area. In addition to the aforementioned elements, an
elearning platform will contribute to informing the potential tourists on the climate,
environmental conditions applied at the time in combination with the presence of the
species in the area. The ultimate goal of the system is to gather data on the presence
of the birds, upload them on the system so as to provide immediate information to
potential tourists. Furthermore, given the lack of information to bird watchers, the
immediate availability to a mobile application will allow the tourists to be constantly
updated on species' movements, whereas the Lesvos Bird Records Committee will
immediately be updated so as to approve or reject the record.
The network consists of (a) several Local Monitoring Stations (LMSs) which
record and transmit data to the main station and (b), the Main station (MS), which
initiates the communication process with all LMSs and stores the data in the database
for future processing.
The Main Station (MS) includes a) all the necessary electronic telemetry hardware
that enables the central system to communicate wirelessly with all the LSMs, either
automatically or on user’s command. b) the software for the safe recording, storage,
presentation and management of measurements and monitoring for excessive
environmental parameter values (alarms). c) Necessary hardware and software for
remotely accessing and managing the MS.
The local stations collect all hydrologic and air indices like water ph, water
temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, turbidity, chloride, nitrate and
ammonium ions, chlorophyll, direction and air speed, air temperature and humidity,
sunlight, rainfall e.t.c. The sensors come from various international vendors with
RS232 and analogue output ports (Fig. 5).
455
Fig. 1. Connecting sensors with the central unit of the local station (Tsagaris & Hatzikos,
2014).
An important point is that the system is connected to the batteries that are installed
in the LSM that cover the complete and continuous operation of telemetry system. The
port-to-port response time of the system is negligible. The communication of the
LSMs with the MS is performed through mobile telephony (GSM technology).
3.1 Network Topology
The cameras will be placed to spots indicated by the Hellenic Ornithological
Society whose contribution is of utmost importance. The conjunction of image
capturing with central gathering points will be accomplished with the use of wireless
links. A wireless link will also be used for the connection of any intermediate spot
with the central station. All the points of image capturing will communicate with the
use of directional antennas to guarantee the required communication speeds and the
protocol used will be Ethernet TCP/IP.
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Fig. 2. Network topology.
3.2 E-learning Platform
Nowadays, users not only do they seek the information but rather participate in its
creation (wikis), comment (forum, blogs, micro blogs), create networks with
common interests (social networking), cooperate (collaborative networks), they are
trained (e-learning) in combination with traditional learning (blended learning), they
entertain with videos (youtube) and pictures (flikr). This is the new face of the
evolving network (Web 2.0)
The e-learning platform will include learning objects, which will be compatible to
SCORM standard and communicate user data and performance data i.e. user id,
pictures uploaded by the user, user's records accepted by LBRC etc. Users will be
trained to interpret the data collected by the stations like wind speed, waterfall, bird
movements, threats etc.
The educational material will be accessible to all users and it will record statistical
info on its use by visitors in order to evaluate and upgrade the platform.
457
4 Discussion
Ecotourism is an alternative form of tourism, which focuses on the preservation of
the environment and the sustainable development of an area. Lesvos island is a well-
known island for the development of alternative forms of tourism and the rare flora
and fauna present on the area. Bird watchers flood the area in springtime looking to
record views of rare species.
On the other hand, records aren't approved or rejected on time. It needs to be
highlighted that there are records that haven't yet been examined since 2013.
Thus, there is a need for online information and education on the area's
exceptional natural environment and provide instant update on the presence of rare
birds.
Technology can contribute to satisfy the above-mentioned needs of all interested
parties.
The system described in the current paper benefits scientists - ornithologists who
visit the area to observe the birds, environmental associations, students, potential
tourists, ecotourists and visitors in general, local authorities. Their benefits can be
grouped in:
• understanding the unbreakable relationship between the human and nature
and their interaction
• sensitizing the public in environmental education
• documentation of rare species
• creation of a pillar of environmental education and research
• educating people on the rare flora and fauna of Lesvos island
Managerial implications
Such a system can contribute to decision making on a local or regional level
regarding the development of an area with environmental concerns. Through the
elaboration of the data gathered, important decisions can be made regarding the
impact of the visitors on the area, the endangered species as well as the satisfaction
of the visitors' needs. Lastly, the proposed system can heavily contribute to the
environmental education in Greece and abroad via the online learning platform,
which gives remote access to everybody interested in the area or ornithology.
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