Citizen science is rapidly becoming an invaluable tool in conservation. With technology providing new and interactive ways for anyone to contribute to conservation work from anywhere in the world, and on their own schedule, more conservationists than ever are turning to mobile apps and crowdsourced data analysis to speed up their projects and strengthen their data.
Similarly, more affordable and accessible tools like Audiomoth have opened the door for people to get involved in massive data collection efforts like the Silent Cities project, giving a glimpse into how our wider understanding of nature and conservation could be transformed as technology becomes increasingly user-friendly.
This group is your place for all things related to citizen science. Whether you're looking to get involved in a new conservation tech project, you're thinking of launching your own citizen science-powered project, you'd like to discuss capacity building and how citizen science can empower local communities, or you want to share a great resource or project you've found, this group will help you connect with others who are excited about making conservation tech accessible and effective!
To learn more about citizen science, check out this 2020 WILDLABS feature on Zooniverse projects.
- @HeinrichS
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IT Business Consultant, conservation tech geek, custodian (some say owner) and passionate protector of African wildlife.
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Fauna & Flora
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- @alexrood
- | she/her
WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Communications and Community Management Associate Specialist at WWF-US
- 28 Resources
- 17 Discussions
- 8 Groups
- 0 Resources
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- 8 Groups
- @Durgananda
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- 0 Resources
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- 20 Groups
- @rowan
- | they / them
Octophin Digital
Jack of all Trades. I've been a zoo keeper, a conservation geneticist and a web developer who specialises in conservation projects and orgs.
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- 3 Discussions
- 15 Groups
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Fauna & Flora
Remote Sensing Scientist
- 2 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 6 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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- 4 Discussions
- 5 Groups
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
- @TaliaSpeaker
- | She/her
WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Research Specialist at WWF-US
- 12 Resources
- 54 Discussions
- 24 Groups
- @serena.le
- | she/her
Conservation tech enthusiast
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 9 Groups
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Sharing interesting DIY or low-cost projects?
12 July 2023 9:03pm
16 August 2023 12:46pm
Super duper getting that mesh network working. Valuable resources. I have been working with IP camera systems since 2008 and have tried a lot of them. Ubiquiti itself is a great networking brand, the only comment I have about their cameras though is that they do not support a motion jpeg (mjeg) stream of any sort. What this means is that in order to get a still image for use in an AI computer vision system you have to waste GPU power somewhat getting the still. Generally speaking I would suggest to new things that have in their mind future AI integration is to choose a camera that supports an mjpeg stream with a custom frame rate. For example, I have 15x cameras around my home. They are all being analyzed in real time with the highest scoring object detector (Currently) (That is published using the coco dataset from microsoft) yolov6. I also double check matches sometimes with yolov7 to provide extra resilience to false positives.
For this I tend to consume an mjpeg camera stream at 640x480 resolution at a frame rate of just 6 frames per second. That means that any system that is performing local object detection on something like the jetson series SBCs do not have to use any of their capacity first decoding mpeg streams to images.
31 August 2023 9:46pm
Hi! @Surfingpsychedelicchicken ! yeah we run a conference kind of about this (well actually i've been helping run two conferences about this!) Dinacon and the GOSH gathering! Thanks @StephODonnell !
www.dinacon.org is about an anti-disciplinary gathering of people to explore field biology and design and it's a long form conference (minimum stay 7 days, whole conference is 1 month+)
GOSH is another group kind of like wildlabs here, a bit less focused on field tech, but still has lots of international folks working on open science hardware of many sorts
And they also have an "unconference" that happens every couple of years (last year it was in panama) that is more traditional (4-5 days) but chock full of wonderful folks!
Seedbank Project on iNaturalist
25 August 2023 4:28am
Mobile App. Developer / Gibbon Research
24 August 2023 9:59am
Earth Observation Tech Saved Critically Endangered Giraffes
14 August 2023 3:42pm
Here is a great story of how earth observation technologies and a specially-built barge dubbed the 'GiRaft' helped save critically endangered Rothschild's giraffes from Longcharo Island when rising lakes proved a significant threat.
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Judges' Panel Honorees
4 August 2023 10:00am
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Community Choice Honorees
3 August 2023 10:00am
Interested in being part of the Enduata Emaa CBO's Green Planet Ambassadors Project in Amboseli?
5 July 2023 10:28am
25 July 2023 1:14pm
@richardturere Hello :) and a warm welcome to WILDLABS! Here is the link to @Lekato Samuel Lekato - Founder and Chairman, Enduata Emaa CBO. Sam is interested in conservation technology focused on how to keep wild animals away from community homesteads in Amboseli and I reckon your Lion Lights could help. I'll let you two take on the conversation from here. Thanks!
CCIPH: Empowering Communities in Biodiversity Efforts
13 July 2023 10:00am
13th International Symposium on Digital Earth
4 July 2023 2:51pm
Osa Conservation: A Multi-Tech Toolbox of Solutions
22 June 2023 10:42am
The Wildlife Society Conference
19 June 2023 5:59am
Carnegie Mellon Bird ID with AI Research Study
12 June 2023 6:17pm
FieldKit: Accessible Sensor Technology for All
23 May 2023 10:26pm
Animal tracking stories
22 May 2023 2:19am
Happywhale: AI-Powered Whale Identification
16 May 2023 10:00am
Crowdsourcing individual ID for pop dyn?
1 May 2023 5:36pm
5 May 2023 6:15pm
That sounds like a really neat project! Do fish get re-caught often enough that individual ID is useful? Is sample bias (more data from popular spots) an issue?
Bluspark - Integrated management platefmorm for protected areas
28 April 2023 9:28pm
USD500 available for your workshop
6 March 2023 1:30pm
Key Conservation Platform Launch Party!
2 February 2023 6:17am
Consultancy opportunity: Wildlife monitoring specialist
31 January 2023 11:26am
Data upload solution for a citizen science project?
21 September 2022 8:55pm
20 October 2022 10:54am
If you have a server and can host a solution, install on the server your own instance of Next Cloud, Pydio or similar - it's exactly what you need without reinventing the wheel.
23 October 2022 8:25am
Strongly supporting the Nextcloud/owncloud suggestion -
apart from bringing everything you list in your requirements, it would give you a lot of features that might be useful as the project grows (versioning, failover for lost/failed data, sharing, ..)
Available for more advice, if needed.
19 January 2023 5:21pm
Hi Jim, could you please update us on your final choice and experience so far?
New issue of BES' Ecological Solutions and Evidence Journal
13 January 2023 3:43am
The British Ecological Society's journals always have topics that will interest our conservation tech community - in this particular issue, you'll find research on a large-scale camera trapping effort to monitor mammals, as well as the role of citizen science in data analysis for that project.
WEBINAR: Earth, Wind & Fire: Amphibian Response to Wildfires, Windfarms, & More
11 January 2023 5:59pm
FULL STACK DEVELOPER (FOREST COMMUNITIES MONITORING SYSTEM)
19 December 2022 10:40am
Crowdfunding Aerial Baseline Study of Ghost Gear in Koh Phangan, Thailand
18 December 2022 11:06am
We are developing a project in Thailand, using drones to locate lost & discarded fishing gear across Koh Phangan, Thailand.
We're 86% there & only need $1500 to get us over the line. If you can help us, we would really appreciate it!
This project uses drones to create a baseline survey of lost fishing gear & document effects of entanglement on marine species.
We are working with Core Sea & Koh Phangan Sea Guardians to develop a locally led method for ongoing monitoring for discarded fishing gear, using drones.
Thank you, Sol, Tania & Kat
ONLINE TRAINING: Project Planning for Wildlife Conservation
15 December 2022 7:11pm
Full-stack developer - Consultancy
6 December 2022 11:01am
Using social media for Citizen Science projects - examples
21 June 2022 2:40pm
4 November 2022 3:19pm
Hi Ashley! Thanks for sharing those handles!
4 November 2022 8:32pm
Hi Natalia!
This is not for birds, but we are running a whole bat monitoring programme based on citizen science, and every tool we have prepared is ready to be used at European scale! You can find all the information here: www.batmonitoring.org
Feel free to contact me if you need any information.
All the best!!
Adrià
19 November 2022 6:44pm
Hi Adrià!
Thanks for sharing the link and congrats on the plans to upscale it! I will explore the page more and reach out with a few questions about setting up stations and the data collection process.
Thanks again! Have a nice weekend!
Natalia
New paper: Integrating machine learning, remote sensing and citizen science to create an early warning system for biodiversity
7 November 2022 7:10pm
Opinion paper describing "how data acquired from remote sensing, citizen science & other monitoring approaches could feed in near-real time to an early warning system for biodiversity that integrates automated red-listing of species with the identification of priority areas for conservation."
28 July 2023 5:43pm
Thanks for starting this thread @Surfingpsychedelicchicken!
I've been working with folks mostly in the Gathering for Open Science (GOSH) community on giving wildlife camera traps stereovision capabilities. See this thread for our extensive discussion on the subject. Stereovision allows camera traps to capture spatial data about the scene in addition to images of wildlife, and this piece of information can greatly help estimate population size.
Recently, one of my colleagues developed a 3D-printed addon that could provide that function. It's looking promising and we're at 95% for a crowdfunding campaign on Experiment.com with just under a week left (also posted here). Sorry to sound self-promoting, but I genuinely believe we've got something going here, and would definitely appreciate some support big or small!
Happy to discuss more here or in the other threads linked to.
P.S. I love your point about anti-disciplinarity!