Quantifying wildlife diversity using persistent homology

Biodiversity refers to the variety of life on planet earth across all levels such as genes to ecosystems. We are at a risk of severe habitat loss and extinction in hotspots of biodiversity. This is due to excess human consumption added with the climate change forces. This underlines the need of a mathematical tool to quantify biodiversity in order to analyse the changes in an environment and act accordingly. We present a novel method of a framework based on 0-d persistent homology to quantify biodiversity of a city. This tool computes entropy of a region based on the diversity of wildlife found. The area of the region is computed using the Monte Carlo Method. We quantify diversity through entropy density and extent this tool to fifteen cities in the United States. The barcodes for these are created for a sample of the data and compared to generate actionable insights.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Industrial Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Gera, Parth

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sowers, Richard B

• Biodiversity
• Persistent Homology
• Quantifying
• Mathematical Tool

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Parth Gera

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117591

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F117591