Giant kangaroo rats to be tallied from space - September 19, 2008
Posted on behalf of Amber Dance
Scientists, tired of trekking to animal traps and flying back and forth in airplanes, are turning to satellite imagery to monitor endangered giant kangaroo rat populations in California (Associated Press). 
Researchers have used satellite imagery before, to find large animals like lions and giraffes (NASA). In this case, scientists won’t be hoping to spot the rats themselves, but the large, cleared, circular areas around their burrows.
Giant kangaroo rats, which are about 15 centimetres long not including the tail (and that’s big, for a kangaroo rat), gather seeds in the San Joaquin Valley, and occasionally hop on their back legs (hence the name). They are well-suited to their desert habitat, extracting all the moisture they need from seeds and the air they exhale. When farmers came to the valley, they brought their own moisture via canals. Agriculture pushed the animals up into the hills, and they now inhabit only 10 percent or less of their original range.
The animals are a keystone species, which is rare for a creature so small, says Tim Bean, a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Their burrows also shelter squirrels and lizards, and they make a tasty meal for kit foxes. “Without them the entire ecosystem would go out of whack,” Bean told the Associated Press. He plans to title his thesis “Counting Rats from Space,” and writes on his lab website that it will likely “become an international phenomenon, spawning everything from a board game to a Top 40 dance hall burner.”
