Powerful conservation tech tools are gathering more data in the field than ever before. But without equally powerful and effective data management and processing tools, that data - no matter how groundbreaking or interesting - will not be able to reach its full potential for impact.
Data management can sometimes seem intimidating to conservationists, especially those just getting started in the world of conservation tech or experimenting with new data collection methods. While every community member's workflow and preferred data management and processing methods may be different, this group can serve as a resource to explore what works for others, share your own advice, and develop new strategies together.
Below are a few WILDLABS events dealing with datasets collected from various conservation tech tools:
Nicole Flores: How do I get started with Wildlife Insights?
Jamie Macaulay: How do I analyse large acoustic datasets using PAMGuard?
Sarah Davidson: Tools for Bio-logging Data in Conservation
Whatever conservation tech tools you work with, and whatever your preferred data management methods, we hope you'll find something helpful and effective in this group when you become a member!
- @pbull
- | he/him
DrivenData
Engineer and AI for Good leader working on bringing machine learning tools to social impact organizations.
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- @PierreBonnet
- | Pierre
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2828-4389
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Team lead for the ARISE Biocloud team, developing an infrastructure for biodiversity monitoring and digital species identification. Also, project lead for the Diopsis insect camera project.
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Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary
Technology Manager at Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary
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- @diego_lizcano
- | He/Him
Wildlife biologist interested in biodiversity monitoring and the conservation of mammals. Passionate photographer.
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TerrOïko
PhD Student in statistical ecology
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TerrOïko
R&D Engineer
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- 6 Groups
- @catwasp
- | She/her
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Ph.D Speech-Hearing Sciences; 3D Designer/Printer interested in building/testing/deploying standardized environmental recording platforms for scientists and engineers in developing countries.
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- @Durgananda
- | He
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Technical Specialist at FFI: loves data management, maps, remote sensing & GIS for conservation
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Global Fishing Watch are looking for a data scientist to join the Research and Innovation team. Help us tackle geospatial data fusion problems to produce the most complete picture of human activity at sea.
19 April 2023
How to use geospatial data for rapid analyses of forest carbon projects
5 April 2023
How environmental consultancy Eticwood use geospatial data for rapid forest carbon project assessments
24 March 2023
When do you use a bar chart over a line chart? What are area charts good for? What's wrong with pie charts? Learn about how these different types of data visualization work, and how they're used, in Observable's first...
21 March 2023
The Innovation in Practice edition of Methods in Ecology and Evolution is still seeking proposals about conservation technology
6 March 2023
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Rainforest Connection (RFCx) is bringing back the Arbimon newsletter for 2023! We're excited to share new features and tools of the platform, what's coming up, and some insights into our projects on bioacoustic...
23 February 2023
WeForest is looking for a consultant(s) to identify the best tool(s) and/or program(s) to standardize M&E data collection and management across all our Forest Landscape Restoration projects, globally. Will you...
21 February 2023
Researchers and conservationists are embarking on a bold initiative to save the world's most trafficked wild mammal — the pangolin
16 February 2023
Technology to End the Sixth Mass Extinction. Salary: $104k-144K; Location: Washington DC or Seattle WA, potential hybrid; 5+ years of Full stack development experience; Deadline March 15th - view post for full job...
10 February 2023
Individuals and teams developing open data innovations for biodiversity can submit them between now and 22 August for a chance to share up to €20,000 in this annual incentive competition.
10 February 2023
Consultancy opportunity at ZSL for an experienced monitoring specialist to support species monitoring in rewilding landscapes across Europe
31 January 2023
Careers
Join the Arribada Initiative! We have a unique opportunity for a software developer to create mobile / desktop applications and intuitive user interfaces that assist researchers and fieldworkers to conserve wildlife.
16 January 2023
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi everyone, I seek your help for the choice of my thesis subject, I hold a Master's degree in Management of protected areas and I have... |
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Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools, Protected Area Management Tools, Remote Sensing & GIS | 1 year 7 months ago | |
intrested. |
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Community Base, Data management and processing tools, Early Career, Emerging Tech | 1 year 7 months ago | |
No, I was never able to figure out how to send these to anyone on here. I was hoping to learn how to clear these videos up if possible! |
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Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 year 7 months ago | |
I'll just ask the question without further explanation : How could your work on data management be made easier?I am really interested. |
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Data management and processing tools | 1 year 8 months ago | |
Hi Steph. Would be interested also. |
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Biologging, Community Base, Connectivity, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Remote Sensing & GIS | 1 year 8 months ago | |
Hi Alex,I'd go much further along the lines that David @dtsavage sets out. Before jumping to implementations, better think through why you want to keep all that data, and for who... |
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Acoustics, Data management and processing tools | 1 year 9 months ago | |
The open-source program Audacity can show the spectrograms and histograms and has quite a lot of other useful features, e.g. playing ultrasound calls slower, so it can be heard by... |
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Acoustics, Citizen Science, Data management and processing tools, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 year 9 months ago | |
Have a look at @tessa_rhinehart 's TechTutors on scaling up acoustic surveys. This is addressed at 11 min: The "hexadecapus" is the hardware, but transfer is automated by... |
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Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools | 1 year 10 months ago | |
Agreed that this would be super useful! It definitely would have served me well in undergrad when I was trying out some AI camera trap image analysis and ended up having to build... |
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Data management and processing tools | 1 year 10 months ago | |
Thanks so much!! |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Biologging, Camera Traps, Community Base, Data management and processing tools, Drones, eDNA & Genomics, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions, Remote Sensing & GIS, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 year 10 months ago | |
Hi there Camilo, What an interesting project! If you are looking for a lower cost, but effective tools for acoustic monitoring you might want to look into two options: ... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Data management and processing tools, Sensors, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 year 10 months ago | |
Hello. I am a PhD candidate at Penn State University. I submitted a post to this group back in March and I am resubmitting... |
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Community Base, Data management and processing tools, Remote Sensing & GIS, Wildlife Crime | 1 year 11 months ago |
Webinar: Cloud Computing for Biodiversity and Nature-Based Solutions
2 November 2022 8:09pm
Data mgmt for Passive Acoustic Monitoring best practices?
14 September 2022 8:35pm
19 September 2022 1:58am
Hello Alex,
My information might not be that helpful to you, still, our organisation have an Enterprise license of AWS cloud and we store all our media files (video, pictures, audio etc.) there. We are also using a media management solution, Piction, thru which we upload the files into the S3 bucket and in the process it also captures the file metadata (some of the metadata values needs to be entered manually). This is useful to search the files if someone wants to view or process the file later. We are soon deciding on the file storage configuration so that old files will move to cheap storage like AWS Glacier, which will take a maximum of a week time to retrieve it.
Jitendra
28 October 2022 4:19pm
Hi Alex,
I'd go much further along the lines that David @dtsavage sets out. Before jumping to implementations, better think through why you want to keep all that data, and for who? From your question, it appears you have at least three purposes:
1- for yourself to do your research
2- for others to re-use.
3- for yourself to have a back-up
For 1) you should do what works best for you.
For 3) use your organization's back-up system or whatever comes close to that
For 2 and 3) As you are indicating yourself : deposit your data at your nation's repository or zenodo.org if your nation doe not have one. It may be some documentation work ( which is what you should do anyways, right? ), but then you can stop worrying about holding on to it. Someone else is doing that for you and they do a much better job - because it is their job. Moreover, you increase the chance that other will actually become aware of all that data that you are sitting on by putting it into a repository. Who is otherwise going to find out and how that you have those disks on your desk? Lastly, depositing your data can also serve as a back-up. If you don't want to share it before you've published about it, there is likely the option of depositing under time-embargo or of depositing while requiring your consent for any re-use.
You ask how many people actually do this? You can find the answers at the repository, but I suggest that what matters most is whether you want to for your own reasons, and whether your funders, or organization's funders require it.
Shark Lab Data Analyst
24 October 2022 7:12pm
Software to aid acoustic sound files visualization/labelling + Software to syncronize video/acoustic sonograms
23 September 2022 1:01pm
8 October 2022 12:44am
I would also recommend Arbimon. It is well set up to handle Audiomoth recordings. Being cloud based, you will need a good internet connection for sound file upload. I'm just starting to investigate its use for Song Scope recordings. Setting up the call recognisers will be a slow process, but they can be made available to all users once done.
8 October 2022 7:33am
You could try using a video editor like DaVinci for looking at your video and audio together. I don't think DaVinci displays sonograms by default (just waveform) but I think it will open your selected audio in an external editor which would allow you to see the sonograms and make measurements with something like Audacity or Kaleidoscope.
20 October 2022 11:01am
The open-source program Audacity can show the spectrograms and histograms and has quite a lot of other useful features, e.g. playing ultrasound calls slower, so it can be heard by people.
GIS & Data Science Specialist, Island Conservation
14 October 2022 12:02am
Enterprise Data & Information Architect
11 October 2022 12:12pm
Data Engineer
11 October 2022 11:35am
Multi-SD card reading hubs
2 October 2022 3:46am
4 October 2022 2:04am
Good point and nice link. My USB 3.0 (errr USB 3.1 Gen 1) portable HDD gets a real read speed of 133 MBps or ~1Gbps. The theoretical max is 5 Gbps but I think the speed is limited by processor used by the HDD/USB bridge controller. Most SD card readers may be more limited even if the SD card can handle higher data rates. That may be why it could be best to just use the multi-port device from SanDisk.
7 October 2022 4:35pm
Jamie,
I have been using a 12-card Lexar Professional Workflow system for several years to process images from 24 trail cameras. The system has 4 bays, with 3 card readers per bay. I wrote software to automatically download and rename the images using metadata read from the info banner burned into the images by the camera. (Alternatively, the software can use the Exif metadata attached to the image.) The software is described in a recent Wildlife Society Bulletin:
The software is available on github:
GitHub - hiltonml/camera_trap_tools: Tools for managing camera trap time-lapse recordings
Tools for managing camera trap time-lapse recordings - hiltonml/camera_trap_tools
![](/sites/default/files/embeds/ad667adaa2cfe8f3caa4a41b7d0a79a1.png)
Don't be put off by "time-lapse recordings" - it works on still images also.
Regards,
Mike Hilton
8 October 2022 12:22am
Have a look at @tessa_rhinehart 's TechTutors on scaling up acoustic surveys. This is addressed at 11 min:
The "hexadecapus" is the hardware, but transfer is automated by naming the SDCards prior to use and scripts take care of the transfer. The scripts may be written up in the audiomoth guide but the kitzes lab have this on github (although it may be mac specific)
Frontiers Symposium: Digital tools for reversing environmental degradation
5 October 2022 10:23am
Interest in an "IT for Ecologists" webinar/manual?
4 October 2022 1:24am
4 October 2022 1:42pm
Next WILDLABS virtual course?!? :)
4 October 2022 9:55pm
Agreed that this would be super useful! It definitely would have served me well in undergrad when I was trying out some AI camera trap image analysis and ended up having to build my own system from scrap pieces in a professor's gear closet, ha. Just some basic understanding of what would be required from a system for that kind of work would have saved me a lot of time and chaos. Some kind of guide or course that covers what to be thinking about depending on your data and goals would be awesome
Conservation leadership: Learning
4 October 2022 2:29pm
ONLINE COURSE: Monitoring and Evaluation for Wildlife Conservation
4 October 2022 2:04pm
ONLINE COURSE: Project Management for Wildlife Conservation
4 October 2022 2:00pm
18 Sustainability Job Opportunities at Google
3 October 2022 7:09pm
NHM develops new data platform with AWS: The Data Ecosystem
3 October 2022 6:09pm
Conservation Tech Directory - new update!
29 August 2022 2:38pm
23 September 2022 5:26pm
Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!
26 September 2022 10:07pm
Thanks so much!!
Ecological Forecasting Initiative's data analysis webinar series
26 September 2022 6:50pm
Mangrove soundscape
27 August 2022 4:57pm
29 August 2022 2:47pm
You might check out the devices listed in the Conservation Tech Directory - you can search for 'acoustic recorder' or 'ARU' or something like that.
The most common off-the-shelf models (other than Frontier Labs' BARLTs mentioned above😊) are Open Acoustic Devices Audiomoths & Hydromoths (which may be particularly useful for you since they come in completely watertight cases that can be stuck underwater for deployments), Wildlife Acoustics' SongMeter series, and Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Swift units.
30 August 2022 10:10pm
Camilo--
Are you interested only in airborne sounds or do you want to deploy hydrophones? That decision would inform a lot of other decisions about your purchase of equipment, as would having a clearer picture of your budget.
23 September 2022 5:39pm
Hi there Camilo,
What an interesting project! If you are looking for a lower cost, but effective tools for acoustic monitoring you might want to look into two options:
SoundTraps - are very commonly used and perform quite well:
SonarPoints - these are also a great instrument option:
The planet matters. People matter. Location matters.
23 September 2022 12:16pm
Movement Ecology Field Team and Data Coordinator: Osa Conservation [Open until filled)
22 September 2022 11:55pm
Senior Conservation Technology Expert Position (Consultancy) with the Global Wildlife Program
22 September 2022 5:35pm
Catch Up with the Variety Hour: October 2022
22 September 2022 1:59pm
HeroX Challenge: Better Call Trawl
![](/sites/default/files/nasa_tournament_lab-.png)
21 September 2022 6:50pm
First-of-Its-Kind Digital Platform Reveals Migration Data for Birds Across the Americas Just In Time for Fall Migration
16 September 2022 1:02pm
Data Beyond Borders Symposium
15 September 2022 12:35pm
Join the BirdNET team!
9 September 2022 2:43pm
Postdoc: Interpretable ML for species-based image classification
1 September 2022 9:34pm
ONLINE COURSE: Grant Writing for Wildlife Conservation
31 August 2022 2:38pm
Mara Predators Hackathon
30 August 2022 1:28pm
15 September 2022 4:20pm
Hi Alex--
The first thing I'd suggest you think through is how much data you have vs how much data you are currently working on. Because if you have data from previous years that you want to ensure you're storing securely and reliably but don't need immediate access to in order to run analysis on, that opens up some options. You can compress data using lossless algorithms like FLAC, where the compression ratio varies but 50% is a pretty good margin, and then convert back to WAV if necessary for reanalysis. Compressing using MP3, OGG, AIFF, or other compression algorithms is an option that saves even more storage space but you will lose information in ways you wouldn't with FLAC--it depends on your specific needs.
I'd also recommend setting up a RAID array (RAID = "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks"). This offers some additional security in event of a drive failure. A lot of folks who do video editing, probably the most similar use case to people working with acoustic data who also lack the institutional support of a large company or university IT department use a local NAS enclosure like https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-433 that are designed for just this purpose. Some higher initial startup costs than just buying individual USB hard drives but that does come with some perks including additional reliability and can be faster to read data depending on the exact drive specs and your local networking setup.
There are also low-cost cloud storage services like Amazon's Glacier. However, getting these set up can be a little bit tricky and they are not particularly responsive (for example, if you upload data to Glacier, it will be very safe, but getting it back if you need to use it again can take a few days depending on the dataset size).