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!
- @TWicks
- | They/She
I'm a Conservation Biologist working in the Harney Basin in SE Oregon, U.S.A. I introduced ARUs to the work out here and am always looking for ways to use technology to further the conservation objectives for my org and our partners.
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- 3 Discussions
- 1 Groups
Quantitative ecologist @ Biotope
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- 4 Groups
- @donovantye
- | He/Him
Savanna Ecologist, Field Station Director and Head of Conservation Tech Projects for Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS).
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- 14 Groups
- @Seagoose
- | she/her
Ecologist & Conservationist. Women for the Environment, Africa Fellow. National Geographic Explorer.
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- 4 Discussions
- 8 Groups
- @KC
- | She/her
Graduate Research Assistant at SDSU, Conservation officer for Department of Forest and Park Services, Bhutan. Works on carnivores, applied quantitative ecologist
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- 0 Discussions
- 7 Groups
- @SeanB
- | he/him
Cellular Tracking Technologies
Software Engineer at Cellular Tracking Technologies. I'm passionate about developing cutting-edge technology for scientific research and advancing data analysis methods for telemetry devices.
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- 6 Groups
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Wildlife conservationist
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Senior Director, Data Science and Technology, Birds Canada
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Data has been my passion and i enjoy working with data while bringing value to the business. Data engineer with 7+ years of experience Eager to support with expert analytical skills to advance the companys business operations and strategic initiative.
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- 9 Groups
- @kbubnicki
- | he/his
Ecologist, data scientist, and programmer with over 13 years of professional experience. Open source and Linux enthusiast. Researcher at the Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, and CEO of the Open Science Conservation Fund.
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- 5 Groups
Fauna & Flora
Remote Sensing Scientist
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- 6 Groups
Careers
Research Assistant, Lion Landscapes in Nanyuki
Esther Githinji
Are you passionate about wildlife conservation and eager to contribute to meaningful research efforts? Lion Landscapes is seeking a dedicated and proactive Research Assistant to join their team.
11 April 2024
Careers
Conservation Science Intern - Space for Giants, Nanyuki
Esther Githinji
Space for Giants is looking for a Conservation Science Intern to help support the Conservation Science team in managing data flow, storage, and analysis to maximize the efficiency of monitoring and evaluating impact.
9 April 2024
Article
In a recent publication we tested Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring (UPAM) as a feasible non-invasive technique to study the calling behavior of therathened aquatic Andean frogs under natural conditions in the...
6 April 2024
Article
The Variety Hour: 2024 Lineup
Alex Rood
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
Article
SMART Global Congress 2024: A quick summary
Adrien Pajot
SMART Global Congress, the first global gathering of conservation professionals using SMART, was held in Windhoek, Namibia from March 10-13. Here is a snapshot of what we learned!
19 March 2024
Careers
Data Manager and Technology Coordinator, ABC Global Climate Center
Stephanie O'Donnell
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
Article
Emerging trends for Nature-Based Solutions project assessments
8 March 2024
Article
Catch up on the conservation tech discussions and events that happened during World Wildlife Day 2024!
7 March 2024
Careers
Machine Learning Postdoc Position, Understory
Ross Davison
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
Article
Data data everywhere, but not a byte to use!
Cassie Anderson
Is there really a sustainability data deficiency? We don’t think so.
29 February 2024
Careers
SMART Partnership Director
Richard Bergl
The SMART Partnership is hiring a Program Director to oversee all aspects of the partnership's operations
21 February 2024
Careers
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
July 2024
October 2024
November 2023
| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hello everyone I am a current Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay and am working with a local national park to create a camera trap project.... |
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Data management and processing tools, Camera Traps, Conservation Tech Training and Education | 7 minutes 10 seconds 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 | 1 day 10 hours ago | |
| This is so cool @Mauricio_Akmentins - congrats and look forward to seeing your project evolve! |
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Acoustics, Biologging, Climate Change, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions, Protected Area Management Tools, Sensors, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 week 1 day ago | |
| First things first, our team, @jcguerra10, @hefca, and myself, is thrilled to share with immense pride... |
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Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Data management and processing tools, Sensors | 2 weeks 2 days ago | |
| This thread is off-topic in this conversation, so happy to continue it in the other one. However, just noting - your system is one example, but not the only one - there are... |
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Human-Wildlife Conflict, Data management and processing tools | 3 weeks 1 day ago | |
| Thank you Carly, I will definitely take a look. |
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Acoustics, Biologging, Climate Change, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Remote Sensing & GIS, Software and Mobile Apps | 3 weeks 6 days ago | |
| Hello Friends,Its amazing to see the growing number of organisations working in biodiversity conservation.Biodiversity stories can have a... |
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Data management and processing tools, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 month ago | |
| Were you ever able to solve the problem? Interestingly enough, I begin a seal bio-logging study next year! Also, you are correct. The errors were occurring during short bout... |
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Data management and processing tools | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
| Thank you! This is encouraging. It's also nice to know that Saul is approachable for problem-solving issues. |
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Data management and processing tools | 2 months 2 weeks ago | |
| 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... |
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Camera Traps, AI for Conservation, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Data management and processing tools, Marine Conservation, Protected Area Management Tools, Remote Sensing & GIS | 2 months 2 weeks ago | |
| Hello WILDLABS Community!I work on the development of the hardware for networks of fixed radio receivers that are used to detect... |
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Data management and processing tools | 2 months 3 weeks ago | |
| Hi!I would take a look at Although developed for camera trap imagery, it is by no means restricted to such.Cheers,Lars |
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Camera Traps, Community Base, Data management and processing tools, Drones, Emerging Tech, Remote Sensing & GIS, Software and Mobile Apps | 2 months 3 weeks ago |
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
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:
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
NASA Tournament Lab
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
Survey for Doctoral Research on Poaching in Protected Areas
29 August 2022 10:43pm
Conservation Technology Research Internship
26 August 2022 4:58pm
Ceres Wild Rhino application
22 August 2022 1:29am
29 September 2022 4:05am
Lead Software Engineer for ARISE
19 August 2022 8:22am
Live Q&A Discussion on EarthRanger: All you need to know about the system!
22 July 2022 6:41am
29 July 2022 10:41am
Thank you so much for leading this Q&A session @kennedy_muriithi and for your time. It was lovely hosting you and I believe the community has learnt a lot about the EarthRanger system.
If you have any questions for Kennedy, kindly drop them anytime in this discussion thread- he is more than happy to answer all your questions!
Thank you Kennedy and see you all in our next Q&A session. We will be exploring an interesting conservation technology topic and featuring an amazing speaker, so stay tuned. See you next time!
12 August 2022 12:34pm
Hello Kennedy,
Many thanks for sharing your experiences with ER.
Does ER support integration with Qgis and Arc gis desktop or its only configured to support Arcgis online only?
15 August 2022 6:53am
@Ann_Wambui , Qgis and ArcGis Desktop are stand alone apps that are useful in coming up with geojson files and/or shapefiles that store the location, shape, and attributes of geographic features.
Earthranger does provide a mechanism to upload these geojson and/or shapefiles so that the geographic features stored within these files can be visualized on Earthranger.
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.