I mentioned this on the twitter thread as well, but I'd love to do a proper life-cycle carbon analysis on some key monitoring technologies and compare them to in-person monitoring. With all the carbon embodied in sourcing sensors, SD cards, batteries, etc how long do you have to run your sensors to make them better in carbon terms than in-person surveys?

A paper just came out on this that could provide an interesting starting point. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pan3.10333

This recent article might also be of interest with regard to @dtsavage's point on carbon footprints, but with more of an emphasis on software/AI here - https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-carbon-footprint. "Measuring AI's Carbon Footprint"

@Rob_Appleby @Freaklabs 

I haven't tried anything like a floating mount for camera traps so would love to stay posted on how it goes. It would open up a lot of possibilities, but it sounds quite complicated too.

Awesome stuff!! Interested in what kind of recorders you are using and how are you sync'ing them for the TDOA?

There was a previous Wildlabs thread on this - https://wildlabs.net/discussion/conservation-grants-field-vehicles but it didn't garner any comments unfortunately. 

I'm not sure if IdeaWild allows for car repairs? The grants are for equipment specifically. That's a small grant anyways though ($1500) so you'd probably need something bigger it sounds like.

I don't know of any grants specifically funding this, but most people I know who have gotten vehicles have applied for bigger grants that they write a new vehicle into as a budget line item (e.g., WWF, WCS, CI, MBZ, national agencies like NSF).   

You should talk with the folks at Arribada Initiative, like @Alasdair, as they've used thermal cameras to automatically detect polar bears & alert local response teams (to avoid human-wildlife conflict). The folks at ConservationAI are also doing similar work. RESOLVE also has the Trailguard system 

Most of the geofencing projects I know of are working with tags rather than cameras (e.g., LionShield, Save the Elephants) but it sounds like that wouldn't be as relevant for your needs.

The Conservation Tech Directory may have other examples as well.  

At Ol Pejeta, through the Kifaru Rising project, we have 19 FLIR thermal cameras that we use to address poaching as a conservation challenge.

The cameras have been deployed along a key fence line and are monitored 24/7 by a dedicated team.

The cameras have inbuilt analytics capabilities which allow us to design virtual fences/boundaries. 

An Alert is  generated whenever a human or vehicles crosses the virtual fence. Following an alert, appropriate ranger action is undertaken depending on the video content recorded with each alert.

I think the Alert feature available with these cameras could be leveraged to monitor the wildlife visitor interaction, seeing as a video clip is recorded with each alert, the thermal video clips could be reviewed to assess the wildlife-human interaction effects.

These are fairly low-hanging fruit options if you will (that I'm sure you know about already) but Xeno-Canto & Macaulay Library are online archives for bird images/sounds (Macaulay is for other animals as well). Plus eBird/Merlin, iNaturalist, etc.

You could also check out Key Conservation, run by @mcromp which is working in this space.

You might also check out the Conservation Tech Directory (we have a citizen science filter) to find some examples (e.g., BirdNet, Silent Cities, Cetalingua, Instant Wild). You could also search by 'mobile-app' (another of the filters), as many of those listed have a citizen science component (e.g., Animal Tracker, FinPrint, See Shell).

FlukeBook as a 'tweet-a-whale' thing, so that would be a good example of integration with social media as well.

Hey Natalia,

In addition to what Carly has listed, there's also BirdLasser- You can check it out :)