With new technologies revolutionizing data collection, wildlife researchers are becoming increasingly able to collect data at much higher volumes than ever before. Now we are facing the challenges of putting this information to use, bringing the science of big data into the conservation arena. With the help of machine learning tools, this area holds immense potential for conservation practices. The applications range from online trafficking alerts to species-specific early warning systems to efficient movement and biodiversity monitoring and beyond.
However, the process of building effective machine learning tools depends upon large amounts of standardized training data, and conservationists currently lack an established system for standardization. How to best develop such a system and incentivize data sharing are questions at the forefront of this work. There are currently multiple AI-based conservation initiatives, including Wildlife Insights and WildBook, that are pioneering applications on this front.
This group is the perfect place to ask all your AI-related questions, no matter your skill level or previous familiarity! You'll find resources, meet other members with similar questions and experts who can answer them, and engage in exciting collaborative opportunities together.
Just getting started with AI in conservation? Check out our introduction tutorial, How Do I Train My First Machine Learning Model? with Daniel Situnayake, and our Virtual Meetup on Big Data. If you're coming from the more technical side of AI/ML, Sara Beery runs an AI for Conservation slack channel that might be of interest. Message her for an invite.
Header Image: Dr Claire Burke / @CBurkeSci
Explore the Basics: AI
Understanding the possibilities for incorporating new technology into your work can feel overwhelming. With so many tools available, so many resources to keep up with, and so many innovative projects happening around the world and in our community, it's easy to lose sight of how and why these new technologies matter, and how they can be practically applied to your projects.
Machine learning has huge potential in conservation tech, and its applications are growing every day! But the tradeoff of that potential is a big learning curve - or so it seems to those starting out with this powerful tool!
To help you explore the potential of AI (and prepare for some of our upcoming AI-themed events!), we've compiled simple, key resources, conversations, and videos to highlight the possibilities:
Three Resources for Beginners:
- Everything I know about Machine Learning and Camera Traps, Dan Morris | Resource library, camera traps, machine learning
- Using Computer Vision to Protect Endangered Species, Kasim Rafiq | Machine learning, data analysis, big cats
- Resource: WildID | WildID
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- I made an open-source tool to help you sort camera trap images | Petar Gyurov, Camera Traps
- Batch / Automated Cloud Processing | Chris Nicolas, Acoustic Monitoring
- Looking for help with camera trapping for Jaguars: Software for species ID and database building | Carmina Gutierrez, AI for Conservation
Three Tutorials for Beginners:
- How do I get started using machine learning for my camera traps? | Sara Beery, Tech Tutors
- How do I train my first machine learning model? | Daniel Situnayake, Tech Tutors
- Big Data in Conservation | Dave Thau, Dan Morris, Sarah Davidson, Virtual Meetups
Want to know more about AI, or have your specific machine learning questions answered by experts in the WILDLABS community? Make sure you join the conversation in our AI for Conservation group!
- @ttopa
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Recent Environmental Science and Data Science graduate looking to learn more about the conservation tech world. www.TeodoroTopa.com
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- @HRees
- | Him/His
WILDLABS - Programme Development Manager, keen interest in bats, hyaenas and tech!
- 4 Resources
- 1 Discussions
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Technical Specialist at FFI: loves data management, maps, remote sensing & GIS for conservation
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- @TaliaSpeaker
- | She/her
WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Research Specialist at WWF-US
- 12 Resources
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- @Adrien_Pajot
- | He/His
WILDLABS
Hi! I am Adrien, a dedicated French ornithologist and engineer committed to biodiversity conservation. I joined the WILDLABS team as a project manager in October 2023!
- 13 Resources
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Sustainability Manager for CERES Tag LTD. An animal health company; animal monitoring, conservation, & anti-poaching/ rural crime. Wildlife, livestock, equine & companion. #CeresTrace #CeresWild #CeresRanch
- 2 Resources
- 19 Discussions
- 24 Groups
Ocean Science Analytics
Marine mammal ecologist and online technical trainer
- 1 Resources
- 29 Discussions
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Worked as a mechanical engineer for a defence co, then software engineer, then for a research lab specialising in underwater robotics.
- 1 Resources
- 135 Discussions
- 16 Groups
- @emilydorne
- | she/her
DrivenData
Lead Data Scientist and developer of zamba, a tool for automatic species classification from camera traps
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- @AnnabelL
- | she/her
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- @tutgut5
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Join the Seeed Vision Challenge, an opportunity for conservation innovators to harness the power of AI vision sensors for environmental monitoring and protection.
10 April 2024
Full-Stack Software Developer (Python/React) - Specializing in AI/ML for Wildlife Conservation
5 April 2024
Article
Article from Ars Technica about how difficult it is to detect and avoid kangaroos...
3 April 2024
18 month postdoc research position, Netherlands, EU-funded
28 March 2024
Article
You’re invited to the WILDLABS Variety Hour, a monthly event that connects you to conservation tech's most exciting projects, research, and ideas. We can't wait to bring you a whole new season of speakers and...
22 March 2024
Join our multi-national team at the AI for Biodiversity Change Global Climate Center! We're hiring a Research Data Manager & Tech Coordinator at Ohio State. Support cutting-edge research on climate change &...
15 March 2024
Catch up on the conservation tech discussions and events that happened during World Wildlife Day 2024!
7 March 2024
EcoAssist introduces a free African species identification model for camera trap images, capable of recognising 30 species.
5 March 2024
Join us to help prevent biodiversity loss! Understory is hiring a postdoc to lead R&D Development on generalizing Computer Vision models for vegetation identification across space/time/phenotypes.
29 February 2024
Join the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) in pioneering environmental and ecological monitoring! 🌍💡 As part of ERIN’s Observatory for Climate, Environment, and Biodiversity (OCEB), you'll be at the...
26 February 2024
SNTech are recruiting for 3 roles to assist us to develop computer vision pipelines for underwater monitoring
15 February 2024
We invite applications for the third Computer Vision for Ecology (CV4E) workshop, a three-week hands-on intensive course in CV targeted at graduate students, postdocs, early faculty, and junior researchers in Ecology...
12 February 2024
April 2024
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Already an update from @hikinghack: |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 13 hours 34 minutes ago | |
Got it. We should definitely be able to handle those images. That said, if you're just looking for counts, then I'd recommend running Megadetector which is an object detection... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 day 1 hour ago | |
Hi everyone!@LashaO and @holmbergius from the Wild Me team at ConservationX Labs gave a superb talk at last month's Variety Hour,... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 1 day 13 hours ago | |
Hi everyone! @zhongqimiao was kind enough to join Variety Hour last month to talk more about Pytorch-Wildlife, so the recording might be of interest to folks in this thread. Catch... |
+5
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Open Source Solutions | 1 day 8 hours ago | |
Thanks Carly! I will keep anyone interested in this project posted on this platform. Cheers |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation | 1 day 9 hours ago | |
Hi Matthew,Thanks for your advice, this is really helpful!I'm planning to use it in a seagrass meadow survey for a series of ~20 drops/sites to around 30 m, recording for around... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Sustainable Fishing Challenges | 3 days 17 hours ago | |
Hi Johnathan!Here are a few examples where UAVs and AI has been used to spot animals. https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/7/3/179#:~:text=These%20vehicles%20follow%20flight%... |
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AI for Conservation | 4 days 5 hours ago | |
Greetings Everyone, We are so excited to share details of our WILDLABS AWARDS project "Enhancing Pollinator Conservation through Deep... |
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AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 1 week 4 days ago | |
EcoAssist is an application designed to streamline the work of ecologists dealing with camera trap images. It’s an AI platform that... |
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Software and Mobile Apps, AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 2 weeks 1 day ago | |
We could always use more contributors in open source projects. In most open source companies Red Hat, Anaconda, Red Hat and Mozilla, people often ended up getting hired largely... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Early Career, Marine Conservation | 3 weeks 3 days ago | |
Hi @timbirdweather I've now got them up and running and winding how I can provide feedback on species ID to improve the accuracy over time. It would be really powerful to have a... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Citizen Science, Emerging Tech | 1 month ago | |
Really interesting project. Interesting chip set you found. With up to around 2mb sram that’s quite a high memory for a ultra low power soc I think.It might also be... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation | 1 month 1 week ago |
Successfully integrated deepfaune into video alerting system
2 December 2023 11:15am
29 February 2024 10:36am
In the DeepFaune final paper, it's mentioned that the team developed their own observation type model (detector) based on YOLOv8s, utilizing the cropping information provided by MegaDetectorV5a.
Therefore, for the initial phase, I'm also utilizing the YOLO interface (from Ultralytics) to load the deepfaune-yolov8s_960.pt model and perform the prediction procedure. The results list contains one or more bounding boxes with class ID (animal, person, vehicle) and probability values.
For each object detection, I crop and resize the original image to the area of the bounding box, execute the preprocessImage transformation, and utilize the predictOnBatch method (both from the Classifier class which load deepfaune-vit_large_patch14_dinov2.lvd142m.pt in the background) to obtain scores for species-level classification for each individual bounding box.
This approach could prove valuable to other users seeking to integrate two-step DeepFaune detection and classification into their pipelines or APIs.
29 February 2024 11:04am
Absolutely! I pretty much do the same thing, the resizing step I think relates to what I still have to do. Some large images caused my code to crash.
I want to take it one step further, and that's one of the reasons I want to talk to Microsoft about, I'd like to encourage the abstraction of the object detection with the network API approach I developed as that would mean that any new models anyone developed would simply work out of the box with no additional work with my video alerting software. To that end I need to have a chat to see if they agree with the added value, if so they could potentially add this wrapper around their code and all of those models would be available to alert on and to use is simple Python scripts in other peoples pipelines.
Anyway. That's the plan.
Engineer in novel technologies and approaches for biodiversity monitoring
26 February 2024 6:12pm
Needing help from the community: Bioacoustics survey
14 February 2024 9:46am
24 February 2024 7:23pm
Was great to chat with you Sofia and I would encourage others in the Acoustics community to help provide input for Sofia's study!
26 February 2024 8:57am
Thank you so much for your encouraging words! I'm thrilled to hear that you enjoyed our conversation, and I truly appreciate your support in spreading the word about my survey within the Acoustics community. Input from individuals like yourself is incredibly valuable to my study, and I'm eager to gather as much insight as possible. If you know of anyone else who might be interested in participating, please feel free to share the survey link with them. Once again, thank you for your support—it means a lot to me!
Best regards,
Sofia
Tools for automating image augmentation
26 January 2024 2:33pm
16 February 2024 7:42am
Hi @arky !
Thanks for your reply.
I am running into pytorch/torchvision incompatibility issues when trying to run your script.
Which versions are you using?
Best regards,
Lars
18 February 2024 11:05am
@Lars_Holst_Hansen Here is the information you requested. Also run Yolov8 in multiple remote environments without any issues. Perhaps you'll need to use a virtual environment (venv et al) or conda to remedy incompatibility issues.
$ yolo checks
Ultralytics YOLOv8.1.4 🚀 Python-3.10.12 torch-1.13.1+cu117 CUDA:0 (Quadro T2000, 3904MiB)
Setup complete ✅ (16 CPUs, 62.5 GB RAM, 465.0/467.9 GB disk)
OS Linux-6.5.0-17-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.35
Environment Linux
Python 3.10.12
Install pip
RAM 62.54 GB
CPU Intel Core(TM) i7-10875H 2.30GHz
CUDA 11.7
matplotlib ✅ 3.5.1>=3.3.0
numpy ✅ 1.26.3>=1.22.2
opencv-python ✅ 4.7.0.72>=4.6.0
pillow ✅ 10.2.0>=7.1.2
pyyaml ✅ 6.0.1>=5.3.1
requests ✅ 2.31.0>=2.23.0
scipy ✅ 1.11.4>=1.4.1
torch ✅ 1.13.1>=1.8.0
torchvision ✅ 0.14.1>=0.9.0
tqdm ✅ 4.66.1>=4.64.0
psutil ✅ 5.9.8
py-cpuinfo ✅ 9.0.0
thop ✅ 0.1.1-2209072238>=0.1.1
pandas ✅ 1.5.3>=1.1.4
seaborn ✅ 0.12.2>=0.11.0
18 February 2024 11:18am
Perfect thanks! I am still a novice using Python but my wife can help me!
3x Ai 4 Conservation Job Roles (UK)
15 February 2024 3:28pm
Exploring an ethical reflection tool for animal-focused tech (Survey)
13 February 2024 8:22pm
Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic Radar
7 January 2024 6:50am
10 February 2024 1:32pm
Operating at 2GHz the radar penetrates vegetation so could see through canopy, but not through trunks of trees. However snares are typically set in groups, so one could maximise chance of locating all snares by carrying out a circular/spiral flight path after detection of a potential snare to locate others
12 February 2024 12:12pm
Hi David,
I assume this will only work with wire (metal) snares? We often see snares made of nylon rope (used for lucern bales) in the field, which I assume will be missed by the radar?
Cheers,
Chavoux
13 February 2024 8:43am
Hi David, would love to collaborate with you on this topic. A few years ago Dr. Nick van Doormaal did his PhD on snaring with us and we ran a number of experiments on the detection of snares in a real world scenario using trained anti-poaching teams. I think it would be quite simple to replicate the study and then look at the efficacy of remote sensing vs human detection. Let me know if you are interested in chatting further!
Computer Vision for Ecology Workshop 2025 Call for Applications
12 February 2024 9:29pm
ChatGPT for conservation
16 January 2023 10:04am
4 February 2024 9:28am
The greatest issue with ChatGPT is GIGO (Garbage in, garbage out). It doesn't matter how good the machine learning algorithm is, if it gets fed bad information (data) it will regurgitate bad information. One obvious problem is that it does not reference its information sources. So some of it might be established beyond any doubt, but then it includes something it made up out of thin air with an equally authoritative tone. Because at bottom, ChatGPT is still a dumb machine (or collection of machines) that has to be told what to do by its programmers. It can be useful, but for conservation issues that can have far-reaching implications, I will not trust it. It could be really useful with the addition of two measures (maybe one has already been implemented?):
- The option to show the references for all sources (for each statement that it makes; and if it makes its own logical deduction, show that explicitly).
- Either weighing or restricting its input to sources that has been checked (e.g. peer-reviewed articles) for at least its scientific output (maybe/hopefully Google is already doing this).
I think with the addition of these two functions it will really become useful to conservation. But we are not there yet. In the meantime it is similar to Wikipedia, maybe a good a starting point for further research.
4 February 2024 5:39pm
Just so you know, I uploaded both a photo without a cat and one with a cat in the picture and ask if there was a cat in the picture it got it correct both times.
Uploading pictures to wildlabs doesn't seem to work at this time, so I can't show you the response, but the second answer with the cat in the picture it answered with:
"Yes, there is a cat in this picture. It appears to be in the middle of the driveway."
12 February 2024 1:05pm
You can already achieve both of them with your prompt.
Or, if you're not using ChatGPT specifically but another LLM that you can fine tune, you can use RAG or fine tuning to extra train the algorithm on the data you want it to extract information from.
With ChatGPT you can create your custom GPT now.
Post-doc possition - Field spanning movement ecology, ecology of fear, bio-logging science, behavioral ecology, and ecological statistics
10 February 2024 7:20am
Apply Now: UW Data Science for Social Good Projects
8 February 2024 6:45pm
Sign up for Data Science for Social Good 2024! This summer program is a great opportunity to get dedicated data science support on a conservation (tech) project or to get rich experience as a student in the field. More info in the link - student apps due 2/12, projects due 2/20.
PhD Opportunity - Exploring plants’ sensing capability with vibroacoustics
8 February 2024 5:35pm
Southern African Wildlife Management Association Conference 2024
6 February 2024 12:20pm
Conservation Technology for Human-Wildlife Conflict in Non-Protected Areas: Advice on Generating Evidence
22 January 2024 11:36pm
23 January 2024 1:54pm
This is an area where my system would do very well in:
Also, as you mention areas dominated by humans, there is a high likelyhood that there will be enough power there to support this system, which provides very high performance and flexibility but it comes with a power and somewhat a cost cost.
Additionally, it's life blood comes with generating alerts and making security and evidence gathering practical and manageable, with it's flexible state management system.
Ping me offline if you would like to have a look at the system.
4 February 2024 8:16am
Hi Amit,
The most important thing is that the livestock owners contact you as soon as possible after finding the carcass. We commonly do two things if they contact us on the same day or just after the livestock was killed:
- Use CyberTracker (or similar software) on an Android smart phone to record all tracks, bite marks, feeding pattern and any other relevant signs of the reason for the loss with pictures and GPS coordinates. [BTW, Compensation is a big issue -- What do you do if the livestock was stolen? What do you do if a domestic animal killed the livestock? What if it died from disease or natural causes and was scavenged upon by carnivores afterwards?]
- In the case of most cats, they would hide the prey (or just mark it by covering it with grass or branches and urinating in the area). In this case you can put up a camera trap on the carcass to capture the animal when it returns to its kill (Reconyx is good if you can afford it - we use mostly Cuddeback with white flash). This will normally only work if the carcass is fresh (so other predators would not be able to smell it and not know where it is yet), so the camera only has to be up for 3-5 days max.
This is not really high-tech, but can be very useful to not only establish which predator was responsible (or if a predator was responsible), but also to record all the evidence for that.
AI volunteer work
3 February 2024 12:29pm
Passionate engineer offering funding and tech solutions pro-bono.
23 January 2024 12:06pm
26 January 2024 3:18pm
Hi Krasi! Greetings from Brazil!
That's a cool journey you've started! Congratulations. And I felt like theSearchLife resonates with the work I'm involved round here. In a nutshell, I live at the heart of the largest remaining of Atlantic forest in the planet - one of the most biodiverse biomes that exist. The subregion where I live is named after and bathed by the "Rio Sagrado" (Sacred River), a magnificent water body with a very rich cultural significance to the region (it has served as a safe zone for fleeing slaves). Well, the river and the entire bioregion is currently under the threat of a truly devastating railroad project which, to say the least is planned to cut through over 100 water springs!
In face of that the local community (myself included) has been mobilizing to raise awareness of the issue and hopefully stop this madness (fueled by strong international forces). One of the ways we've been fighting this is through the seeking of the recognition of the sacred river as an entity of legal rights, who can manifest itself in court, against such threats. And to illustrate what this would look like, I've been developing this AI (LLM) powered avatar for the river, which could maybe serve as its human-relatable voice. An existing prototype of such avatar is available here. It has been fine-tuned with over 20 scientific papers on the Sacred River watershed.
And right now myself and other are mobilizing to manifest the conditions/resources to develop a next version of the avatar, which would include remote sensing capacities so the avatar is directly connected to the river and can possibly write full scientific reports on its physical properties (i.e. water quality) and the surrounding biodiversity. In fact, myself and 3 other members of the WildLabs community have just applied to the WildLabs Grant program in order to accomplish that. Hopefully the results are positive.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that our mobilization around providing an expression medium for the river has been multimodal, including the creation of a shortfilm based on theatrical mobilizations we did during a fest dedicated to the river and its surrounding more-than-human communities. You can check that out here:
Let's chat if any of that catches your interest!
Cheers!
2 February 2024 1:22pm
Hi Danilo. you seem very passionate about this initiative which is a good start.
It is an interesting coincidence that I am starting another project for the coral reefs in the Philipines which also requires water analytics so I can probably work on both projects at the same time.
Let's that have a call and discuss, will send you a pm with my contact details
There is a tech glitch and I don't get email notifications from here.
Jupyter Notebook: Aquatic Computer Vision
25 January 2024 5:50am
26 January 2024 1:46pm
This is quite interesting. Would love to see if we could improve this code using custom models and alternative ways of processing the video stream.
27 January 2024 4:07am
This definitely seems like the community to do it. I was looking at the thread about wolf detection and it seems like people here are no strangers to image classification. A little overwhelming to be quite honest 😂
While it would be incredible to have a powerful model that was capable of auto-classifying everything right away and storing all the detected creatures & correlated sensor data straight into a database - I wonder if in remote cases where power (and therefore cpu bandwidth), data storage, and network connectivity is at a premium if it would be more valuable to just be able to highlight moments of interest for lab analysis later? OR if you do you have cellular connection, you could download just those moments of interest and not hours and hours of footage?
27 January 2024 6:11am
Am working on similar AI challenge at the moment. Hoping to translate my workflow to wolves in future if needed.
We all are little overstretched but it there is no pressing deadlines, it should be possible to explore building efficient model for object detection and looking at suitable hardware for running these model on the edge.
New paper - An integrated passive acoustic monitoring and deep learning pipeline for black-and-white ruffed lemurs in Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar
23 January 2024 4:08pm
19 February 2024 4:22pm
19 February 2024 5:46pm
Monitoring setup in the forest based on the wifi with 2.4 GHz frequency.
30 December 2023 4:39pm
18 January 2024 8:17pm
Hi Dilip,
I do not have data about signal distortion in a forest area and with the signal you are intended to use.
However, in a savannah environment, when I put a tour on the highest point of the park, Lora signal (avg 900MHz) is less distorted than WiFi signal (2.4GHz). This is normal as a physics law: the frequency determines the wave length, and the less the length (obviously the less the frequency), the less obstructed the signal.
So, without interfering with your design, I would say that in a forest configuration, WiFi will need more access points deployed and may be more costly, and in your context, even when using LoRa, you will need more gateways than I have in a savannah.
To design the approximate number of gateways, you may need to use terrain Visibility analysis.
To design the cameras deployment, you will need to comply with the sampling methods defined in your research. However, if it is on for surveillance reasons, you may need to rely on terrain visibility analysis also.
Best regards.
22 January 2024 6:22pm
I've got quite a lot of experience with wireless in forested areas and over long(ish) ranges.
Using a wifi mesh is totally possible, and it will work. You will likely not get great range between units. You will likely need to have your mesh be fairly adaptable as conditions change.
Wireless and forests interact in somewhat unpredictable ways it turns out. Generally, wireless is attenuated by water in the line-of-sight between stations. From the Wifi perspective, a tree is just a lot of water up in the air. Denser forest = more water = worse communications. LoRa @ 900Mhz is less prone to this issue than Wifi @ 2.4Ghz and way less prone than Wifi @ 5Ghz. But LoRa is also fairly low data rate. Streaming video via LoRa is possible with a lot of work, but video streaming is not at all what LoRa was build to do, and it does it quite poorly at best.
The real issue I see here is to do with power levels. CCTV, audio streaming, etc are high data rate activities. You may need quite a lot of power to run these systems effectively both for the initial data collection and then for the communications.
If you are planning to run mains power to each of these units, you may be better off running an ethernet cable as well. Alternatively, you can run "power line" networking, which has remarkably good bandwidth and gets you back down to a single twisted pair for power and communications.
If you are planning to run off batteries and/or solar, you may need a somewhat large power system to support your application?
23 January 2024 1:19am
I would recommend going with Ubiquity 2.4Ghz devices which have performed relatively well in dense foliage of the California Redwood forests. It took a lot of tweaking to find paths through the dense tree cover as mentioned in the previous posts.
A gentle introduction to computer vision-based specimen classification in ecological datasets
26 January 2024 2:20pm
26 January 2024 2:24pm
Using "motion extraction" for animal identification
16 January 2024 3:46pm
17 January 2024 2:54am
Hi Dhanu,
Our group moved to Wildlife Insights a few years back (for a few reasons but mostly ease of data upload/annotation by multiple users) so I haven't tried EcoAssist. This being said, I will look into it as a pre-WildlifeInsights filter to analyze the tens of thousands of images that get recorded when camera traps start to fail, or get confused with sun spots (which can be common at one of our sites, a south-facing slope with sparse canopy cover).
Thanks for sharing!
17 January 2024 5:16am
You are most welcome.
I can only highly recommend joining the online events! They are really inspiring.
- and it is great to "meet" and chat with fellow WildLabbers during the "after hours".
17 January 2024 4:22pm
Very nice video in the link you posted btw:
Here is another less artistic one:
Salesforce Accelerator: AI for Climate
16 January 2024 10:15am
Two year postdoc - Machine Learning & Bioacoustics
16 January 2024 7:49am
Wildlife Conservation for "Dummies"
9 January 2024 10:02pm
10 January 2024 11:24pm
Maybe this is obvious, but maybe it's so obvious that you could easily forget to include this in your list of recommendations: encourage them to hang out here on WILDLABS! I say that in all seriousness: if you get some great responses here and compile them into a list, it would be easy to forget the fact that you came to WILDLABS to get those responses.
I get questions like this frequently, and my recommended entry points are always (1) attend the WILDLABS Variety Hour series, (2) lurk on WILDLABS.net, and (3) if they express a specific interest in AI, lurk on the AI for Conservation Slack.
I usually also recommend that folks visit the Work on Climate Slack and - if they live in a major city - to attend one of the in-person Work on Climate events. You'll see relatively little conservation talk there, but conservation tech is just a small subset of sustainability tech, and for a new person in the field, if they're interested in environmental sustainability, even if they're a bit more interested in conservation than in other aspects of sustainability, the sheer number of opportunities in non-conservation-related climate tech may help them get their hands dirty more quickly than in conservation specifically, especially if they're looking to make a full-time career transition. But of course, I'd rather have everyone working on conservation!
13 January 2024 3:14am
Some good overview papers I'd recommend include:
- Besson, M., Alison, J., Bjerge, K., Gorochowski, T. E., Høye, T. T., Jucker, T., ... & Clements, C. F. (2022). Towards the fully automated monitoring of ecological communities. Ecology Letters, 25(12), 2753-2775.
- Speaker, T., O'Donnell, S., Wittemyer, G., Bruyere, B., Loucks, C., Dancer, A., ... & Solomon, J. (2022). A global community‐sourced assessment of the state of conservation technology. Conservation Biology, 36(3), e13871.
- WILDLABS-led research! Led by @TaliaSpeaker and @StephODonnell
- Lahoz-Monfort, J. J., & Magrath, M. J. (2021). A comprehensive overview of technologies for species and habitat monitoring and conservation. BioScience, 71(10), 1038-1062.
- Tuia, D., Kellenberger, B., Beery, S., Costelloe, B. R., Zuffi, S., Risse, B., ... & Berger-Wolf, T. (2022). Perspectives in machine learning for wildlife conservation. Nature communications, 13(1), 792.
- Stowell, D. (2022). Computational bioacoustics with deep learning: a review and roadmap. PeerJ, 10, e13152.
- I'm biased towards bioacoustics because that's what I focus on, but this regardless this is an excellent horizon scan of AI/ML for conservation and acoustics!
- Borowiec, M. L., Dikow, R. B., Frandsen, P. B., McKeeken, A., Valentini, G., & White, A. E. (2022). Deep learning as a tool for ecology and evolution. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 13(8), 1640-1660.
I'd also encourage you to follow the #tech4wildlife hashtags on social media!
15 January 2024 4:27pm
I'm also here for this. This is my first comment... I've been lurking for a while.
I have 20 years of professional knowledge in design, with the bulk of that being software design. I also have a keen interest in wildlife. I've never really combined the two; and I'm starting to feel like that is a waste. I have a lot to contribute. The loss of biodiversity is terrifying me. So I’m making a plan that in 2024 I’m going to combine both.
However, if I’m honest with you – I struggle with where to start. There are such vast amounts of information out there I find myself jumping all over the place. A lot of it is highly scientific, which is great – but I do not have a science background.
As suggested by the post title.. a “Wildlife Conservation for Dummies” would be exactly what I am looking for. Because in this case I’m happy to admit I am a complete dummy.
Application of a deep learning image classifier for identification of Amazonian fishes
11 January 2024 8:24pm
HWC Tech Challenge update 2020
SDZWA Conservation Tech Summer Fellowship
9 January 2024 7:04pm
Presentation opportunity: Text analysis for conservation (NACCB 2024)
8 January 2024 4:05pm
Tranforming Conservation Together: Highlights from the 2023 EarthRanger User Conference
2 January 2024 10:11pm
10 January 2024 5:23am
14 January 2024 3:06am
15 January 2024 9:54pm
AI to operate Wildlife Passage Gates
11 December 2023 4:17pm
22 December 2023 2:02pm
In this case, I would use BLE proximity - enough and accurate range, low cost, long battery life, no false positives - KISS ;)
22 December 2023 2:25pm
Aaah, this article suggests that RFID can be used for much greater distances so looks like RFID still remains the best choice.
22 December 2023 4:20pm
BTW. I found out that the Jetson Orin NX 16GB module is drawing around 20W when running continuous inference, processing streams from 6x cameras at 6 fps.
I'll try and find out what you can do with a Pi 5 and a smaller model over Christmas.
29 February 2024 9:41am
As I understand it, the deepfaune's first pass is an object detector was based on megadetector, @schamaille could explain it exactly. In short though, it's output is standard yolo like in terms of properties. From this I use standard opencv code to snip out the individual matches and pass them to the second stage, which is a classifier.
My code needs a bit of cleaning up before I can release it, also it needs to be made more robust for some situations. Also, I'm waiting to hear if I got anywhere with wildlab awards as it would affect my plans going forward. And this could be anything up till the end of next month, though at a wild guessing I'm guessing next week at the UN WWD or at the wildlabs get together :) Anyone else have any theories ?
Also, my code is a little more complex because I abstract the interface to a network based API.
Finally, I don't want to take the wind out of my sails, I would like to launch my integration in time with the release of the Orin based version of my StalkedByTheState software, the usage of which I'm trying to promote. To release earlier take's some of the oomph out of this.
But maybe we can have a video call sometime and we can have a chat about this?