topic: Citizen Science

topic: Citizen Science

Social media activity version | Lean version

Hong Kong as a reef fish haven? These scientists want to get the word out
- For the past 10 years, marine biologist and conservationist Stan Shea has been leading a citizen-science program called the 114°E Hong Kong Reef Fish Survey to compile data on local reef fish species and raise awareness about the marine environment.
- The program relies on a core network of around 50 volunteer divers, who assist Shea with his mission to raise awareness about Hong Kong’s aquatic life.
- There are likely about 500 reef fish species in Hong Kong, but only about 460 have been identified so far; Shea and his team aim to find and document as many of the other overlooked as possible.
- Shea is also working on a photographic book about Hong Kong’s reef fish, which will be published in 2026.

Small, secretive & highly venomous snake seen for first time in Nepal’s hills
- In July 2022, a lesser black krait (Bungarus lividus), a small, secretive and highly venomous snake, was discovered in Dhankuta, Nepal’s eastern hills.
- The snake, previously documented only in Nepal’s plains, was identified by veteran herpetologist Karan Bahadur Shah.
- A study documenting the findings highlights the need for urgent measures, including the establishment of antivenom quick-treatment centers in local hospitals, raising awareness through campaign, and addressing potential human-snake conflicts in the wake of this discovery.

In eastern Indonesia, a child adventurer discovers a new giant stick insect
- In March 2021, a 14-year-old boy discovered a new species of stick insect on Indonesia’s Timor Island while hiking with his father.
- Two years later, scientists published the first description of the new species in the March 2023 edition of the journal Faunitaxys.
- Davis Marthin Damaledo, now 17, a co-author on the paper, named the foot-long stick insect after a 19th-century king who ruled over his native Timor.

Study: Women, youths can be more effective at driving sustainable farming changes
- A study in a farming community on Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island shows that women and younger farmers can be more influential than older men in persuading peers to adopt new technologies and practices.
- The findings could have significant implications for conservation organizations trying to implement sustainable agriculture programs within communities.
- The study looked at two groups — one made up of older men perceived as “opinion leaders,” and the other of mostly women and younger men — and how effective they were at convincing fellow farmers to try out a new pair of cacao pruning scissors.
- Experts say the findings don’t mean older men no longer carry any weight when it comes to influencing community members, and that they should still be consulted and engaged with when introducing development initiatives.

Q&A with Whitley Award winner Sonam Tashi Lama
- Nepali conservationist Sonam Tashi Lama has been named one of six recipients of the Whitley Awards, known as the “Green Oscars,” for his grassroots work conserving the endangered red panda.
- He says the £40,000 cash prize will be invested in improving the animal’s habitat and increasing awareness about poaching.
- It’s estimated one red panda is killed every 10 days, mostly for its pelt, even though research shows there’s no market demand for it.

Amateur naturalists deserve more support and fewer barriers (commentary)
- In the age of iNaturalist when tools are reopening the hallowed tradition of the amateur naturalist, it is perhaps time to address the ways institutions can encourage–rather than discourage–this growing movement.
- With the world faced with a decline in trained, salaried naturalists and biodiversity institutes, we desperately need to elevate and champion the amateurs who are willing to interpret and speak up for wildlife, a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Bird-counting app kindles interest in Nepal’s rich avian life
- Nepali bird enthusiasts used a mobile app in February to record sightings of birds in their neighborhoods, in an initiative inspired by the Great Backyard Bird Count.
- In addition to being a tool for citizen engagement, initiatives like this help scientists assess bird population across the country, conservationists say.
- The success of the February campaign has encouraged organizers to conduct another round in May.

Camera trap study shows conservation efforts ‘are working’ on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula: Video
- The largest-ever camera trap study in Central America, on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, has revealed how human disturbance affects where animals live and how they’re grouped.
- Protected areas and healthy forests held a greater diversity of animals as well as larger species like tapirs, jaguars and pumas, while places with more human activity had fewer species, which tended to be smaller, more common animals like opossums and agoutis.
- The camera trap study, begun in early 2018, shows many species have recovered completely in the forest reserves around Corcovado National Park, indicating that conservation efforts over the past 30 years have been largely effective.
- Local conservation groups are now focused on creating wilderness corridors so larger species like jaguars can rebound in neighboring forests.

Despite deals, plans and bans, the Mediterranean is awash in plastic
- The Mediterranean is considered to be one of the world’s most polluted bodies of water due to waste disposal problems in many countries bordering the sea, as well as the intensity of marine activity in the region.
- There are several existing policies and treaties in place aimed at regulating plastics and reducing plastic pollution in the Mediterranean, but experts say more international cooperation is needed to tackle the problem.
- Citizen science organization OceanEye has been collecting water samples to measure the amount of microplastics present in the surface waters of the Mediterranean.

Women on storm-hit Philippine island lead Indigenous effort to restore mangroves
- Residents of low-lying coastal areas in archipelagic countries like the Philippines are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including the increase of powerful storms like 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan.
- Mangrove forests can buffer the impact of storm surges and high winds, but many of the Philippines’ mangrove ecosystems are severely degraded and efforts to restore them often fail.
- Busuanga Island, in the western province of Palawan, has a particularly effective mangrove restoration program, one that is spearheaded by Indigenous women who play a key role in planting, monitoring and protecting the forests.

Scientists describe new tree frog in push to catalog Indonesia’s amphibians
- A recent study by researchers from Indonesia and Japan describes the molecular, morphological and acoustic traits of a new frog species from Java: Chirixalus pantaiselatan.
- Scientists recommend further research be conducted to evaluate the breeding traits, distribution and population size to determine IUCN and Indonesian national conservation status of the new species.
- Of the more than 400 frog species in Indonesia, only one amphibian, the bleeding toad (Leptophryne cruentata), is currently listed as an Indonesian protected species.
- Citizen science program Go ARK (Gerakan Observasi Amfibi Reptil Kita) is using the iNaturalist scientific data-sharing platform to contribute to a national database for amphibian and reptile research across the Indonesian archipelago.

Sri Lanka’s budding biologists get their science on with iNaturalist
- iNaturalist, a global citizen science platform where users collaborate to identify uploaded photos of fauna and flora, saw its observations from Sri Lanka hit the 50,000 mark, the second-highest in South Asia and 14th in Asia.
- Sri Lanka’s first observation was uploaded in 2011, but it was only in the past two years that a significant increase in observations were recorded, with more young naturalists getting involved in the global initiative.
- The country’s iNaturalist observations have already led to the identification of a range of overlooked species, proving the tool’s successful use in processing field observations.

App harnesses citizen power to keep tabs on Philippines’ coral reefs
- A series of coral bleaching events have affected reefs across the Philippines in previous years, and this year alone 11 such incidents have been reported.
- But bleached reefs aren’t necessarily dead, with some still able to recover if they are resilient enough and if no further stressors come into play.
- Given that the Philippines has an estimated 33,500 square kilometers (nearly 13,000 square miles) of reefs, a volunteer group is relying on a small but growing army of citizen scientists to keep track of these bleaching incidents by submitting photos online or through an app.
- Citizen science could also help identify other threats to coral reefs, including crown-of-thorns infestation and disease outbreaks, as well as identify corals that are more resilient.

‘Our life is plasticized’: New research shows microplastics in our food, water, air
- Microplastics, plastic pieces smaller than 5 millimeters, have become increasingly prevalent in the natural world, and a suite of studies published in the last three years, including several from 2020, shows that they’ve contaminated not only the ocean and pristine wildernesses, but the air, our food, and even our bodies.
- Past research has indicated that 5.25 trillion plastic pieces are floating in the ocean, but a new study says that there are 2.5 to 10 times more microplastics in the ocean than previously thought, while another recent study found that microplastic “hotspots” could hold 1.9 million pieces per square meter.
- Other emerging research suggests that 136,000 tons of microplastics in the ocean are being ejected into the atmosphere each year, and blowing back onto land with the sea breeze, posing a risk to human health.
- Microplastics are also present in drinking water, and edible fruits and vegetables, according to new research, which means that humans are ingesting microplastics every day.

Think you’ve seen a mermaid? This Sri Lankan scientist sets the record straight
- Sri Lankan herpetologist Ruchira Somaweera has launched a YouTube series where he aims to debunk myths about nature and wildlife that continue to hold sway in the Indian Ocean island.
- From his home in Australia, Somaweera hosts virtual discussions with fellow scientists in Sri Lanka, each an expert in their respective field, to tackle the myths in easy-to-understand language.
- He tells Mongabay he has long wanted to do something like this but was too busy for it, until the COVID-19 lockdown gave him the time and opportunity to finally get the project off the ground.
- Among the most misunderstood groups of animals in Sri Lanka are snakes, many of which are falsely believed to be venomous or aggressive, and as a result are often killed on sight.

Overworked, underpaid and lonely: Conservationists find a new community online
- Created by a 26-year-old Australian, a new online community called Lonely Conservationists is bringing together young and struggling conservationists.
- Members post about their experiences, including unpaid jobs, financial woes, mental health issues, and, of course, loneliness.
- The community has succeeded in creating a space for candid, sympathetic conversations about the difficulties of working in conservation.

A celebratory kind of revolution: Peruvian villagers hold a bird festival (commentary)
- A recent bird festival in Loreto, Peru was the culmination of three years of teaching and outreach focused on Amazonian bird studies, which resulted in such concern for birds and their habitat that a kind of revolution is building among the thousands of students involved.
- It’s a celebratory kind of revolution, raising spirits and enhancing cultural arts. Children are showing excitement for the natural world, and their parents are following suit.
- At a time when both the president of Peru and the president of Brazil view the Amazon as a huge, untapped extractive industry basin — whether it’s logging, gold mining, or gas and oil drilling — for rural people to come together to talk about birds and conservation is nothing short of miraculous.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Facebook and Instagram posts help locate pygmy seahorses in Taiwan
- By contacting underwater photographers and divers and searching for photos and posts on Facebook and Instagram, researchers have confirmed the presence of five species of pygmy seahorses in Taiwan.
- This makes Taiwan one of the world’s pygmy seahorse diversity hotspots, the researchers say.
- Green Island and Orchid Island, in particular, were hotspots for pygmy seahorse diversity, the researchers found, and they hope that these discoveries will help inform conservation planning.

‘Fantastic grandmothers’ snorkel, help uncover large sea snake population
- A group of seven women in their 60s and 70s, who call themselves the “fantastic grandmothers,” have helped uncover a surprisingly large population of the venomous greater sea snake in the waters surrounding Nouméa, the capital of the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia.
- By November 2018, the women, all Nouméa residents and expert swimmers and snorkelers, and the researchers had collectively taken nearly 300 photographs of more than 140 individual greater sea snakes — much more than researchers had long believed to occur in the area.
- The citizen science project isn’t just revealing numbers, it’s also helping uncover detailed information on the ecology of greater sea snakes, such as their breeding patterns and changes in population structure over seasons.

“Part of something bigger”: the social movement around New Zealand’s Predator-Free 2050 goal
- Trapping for invasive mammals that prey on New Zealand’s endemic, often flightless, native birds has been part of the country’s rural life for a long time.
- Through the national Predator-Free 2050 program, which aims to wipe out three particularly troublesome predators from the country by 2050, multiple projects are ramping up protective activities to rid areas of these predators and encourage people’s participation in enabling bird populations to recover.
- Apps and other technological developments have already made trapping easier and more efficient, allowed over 1,500 community trapping groups to record and share trap and bait station information with others, and record birdsong to monitor impacts of pest control efforts.
- Support for the Predator-Free 2050 goal isn’t universal, so involving indigenous Māori tribes, who now hunt the invasive predators instead of native birds, and other communities — through technologies and other means of engagement — will remain integral to the ambitious program’s success.

Volunteers find bones of new species of extinct heron at Florida fossil site
- Two volunteers assisting researchers of the Florida Museum of Natural History have found bones that belong to a previously undescribed species of extinct heron, according to a new study.
- The Montbrook site, a large fossil excavation site located a 45-minute drive south of Gainesville, Florida, where the volunteers were working, is estimated to be 5 million to 5.5 million years old.
- Researchers have named the now-extinct heron species Taphophoyx hodgei or Hodge’s tiger heron, after property owner Eddie Hodge, who contacted the Florida Museum of Natural History and allowed them to excavate the site after his granddaughter discovered fossils there in 2015.
- Based on their examination of the bones, the researchers say the extinct species is likely closely related to today’s tiger herons (Tigrisoma spp.), which live in Mexico and Central and South America.

Models, maps, and citizen scientists working to save the Great Barrier Reef
- As global warming drives more events that impact coral reefs, managing the Great Barrier Reef’s resilience demands comprehensive and detailed mapping of the reef bed.
- Available surveys and maps with geographically referenced field data have been limited and fragmented.
- A diverse research team recently demonstrated a successful approach, applying statistics to image data to build predictive models, integrate diverse datasets on reef conditions, and provide a comprehensive map of the Reef that informs reef management decisions.

Trekking the boreal forest for biodiversity (insider)
- Sweden is widely considered to be the world’s greenest country, but its surprisingly lax forestry laws often leave decisions about logging to timber companies, and large swaths of biologically-rich boreal forest are being lost.
- Federal agencies and certifying bodies such as the Forest Stewardship Council have tried to improve the situation, but activists charge that they are unable to prevent forestry companies from cutting even the most valuable and the oldest forest tracts. I traveled there in 2011 to investigate their claims.
- These forest watchdogs have trained themselves to identify rare and endangered species of fungi and lichens, whose presence prevents cutting of those richest tracts, a successful but rugged tactic requiring long days of trekking, climbing, and lifting or turning of many logs.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers.

Combining artificial intelligence and citizen science to improve wildlife surveys
- Migratory species play a key role in the health of the Serengeti ecosystem in East Africa, but monitoring their populations is a time- and labor-intensive task.
- Scientists studying these wildebeest populations compared expert observer counts of aerial imagery to corresponding counts by both volunteer citizen scientists and deep learning algorithms.
- Both novel methods were able to produce accurate wildebeest counts from the images with minor modifications, the algorithms doing so faster than humans.
- Use of automated object detection algorithms requires prior “training” with specific data sets, which in this case came from the volunteer counts, suggesting that the two methods are both useful and complementary.

Latam Eco Review: Scandal rocks famed Easter Island park and a freshwater crab discovery

Scandal surrounds indigenous management of a major Easter Island protected area, a newly described freshwater crab species in Colombia, declines in Central America’s peccaries, and a man who can recognize more than 3,000 birdsongs were among the recent top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam. Nepotism in Easter Island: Fraud scandal rocks famous park […]
Top camera trapping stories of 2018
- Camera traps, remotely installed cameras triggered by motion or heat of a passing person or animal, have helped research projects document the occurrence of species, photograph cryptic and nocturnal animals, or describe a vertebrate community in a given area.
- Camera trapping studies are addressing new research and management questions, including document rare events, assess population dynamics, detect poachers, and involve rural landowners in monitoring.
- And with projects generating ever-larger image data sets, they are using volunteers and, more recently, artificial intelligence to analyse the information.

10 ways conservation tech shifted into auto in 2018
- Conservation scientists are increasingly automating their research and monitoring work, to make their analyses faster and more consistent; moreover, machine learning algorithms and neural networks constantly improve as they process additional information.
- Pattern recognition detects species by their appearance or calls; quantifies changes in vegetation from satellite images; tracks movements by fishing ships on the high seas.
- Automating even part of the analysis process, such as eliminating images with no animals, substantially reduces processing time and cost.
- Automated recognition of target objects requires a reference database: the species and objects used to create the algorithm determine the universe of species and objects the system will then be able to identify.

Drone 3D models help assess risk of turtle nesting beaches to sea level rise
- In a recent study, researchers took drone-based images to map the structure of sea turtle nesting beaches in northern Cyprus to determine their susceptibility to flooding from sea level rise.
- Automated drone flights with on-board cameras can record sequences of photos of the surface below, which can be merged in a process called photogrammetry to construct three-dimensional models of the survey area.
- The fast pace of innovation and versatility of drones can improve sea turtle conservation efforts through cheaper, more efficient monitoring.

Gardens with too many nonnative plants threaten populations of insect-eating birds, study finds
- Researchers teamed up with community scientists to explore how nonnative plants in yards and gardens affect the breeding success of chickadees, a common insect-eating bird in the U.S.
- In gardens with less than 70% of native plants by biomass, chickadee populations crashed, because the insects they usually eat cannot live on nonnative trees and flowers.
- Landscaping with native plants helps resident animals thrive by sustaining balanced populations of their prey.

Photos highlight evolving roles of AI, citizen science in species research
- A recent observation by an amateur naturalist of a fiddler crab species hundreds of kilometers north of its known range challenged the complementary strengths of computer vision and human expertise in mapping species distributions.
- The naturalist uploaded this record to the iNaturalist species database used by amateurs and experts to document sightings; expert input correctly identified the specimen after the platform’s computer vision algorithms did not acknowledge the species outside its documented range.
- Citizen naturalist observations can be used to document rapid changes in species distributions. They also can improve modeling and mapping work conducted by researchers and play an increasing prominent role in building environmental databases.

Pod-cast: New app streams whale songs for web users in real time
- Researchers have developed a web application to enable citizen scientists to listen for the sounds of a population of killer whales off North America’s northeast Pacific coast in real time.
- A network of underwater microphones will stream sounds from under the sea to citizen scientists, who can then report any unusual noises and help decode orca language.
- The researchers have found that human listeners can readily detect unusual sounds amid a stream of underwater noise, and their participation can complement machine-learning algorithms being developed.

The Osa Camera Trap Network: Uniting people to monitor biodiversity
- The Osa Camera Trap Network monitors big cats and their prey on public and private lands across Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.
- Concern about connectivity for apex predators between Corcovado National Park and mainland Costa Rica has encouraged the participation of a diverse cadre of stakeholders that has broadened the scale of the project.
- Clear communication, together with a few photos of resident jaguars, have allowed the network’s 23 institutions and communities to install and maintain more than 200 cameras providing the baseline data needed for long-term monitoring of the area’s mammals.

The iNaturalist species data sharing platform reaches one million users
- The iNaturalist species data-sharing platform reached a milestone earlier this month with its one millionth observer.
- The 10-year-old platform and mobile app use several smartphone technologies, crowd-sourced data, and artificial intelligence to help observers identify the species of plants and animals they see.
- Co-founder Scott Loarie highlighted the rapid progress in computer vision technology as a surprisingly helpful technology that complements crowdsourcing to speed the image identification process for a large number of photos, though it has also introduced other concerns, including how to maintain high data quality.

Tiny tags and a broad research network help track small animal movements
- Despite great advances in radio-telemetry technology, tracking small animals still presents challenges due to the weight of tracking equipment.
- The Motus Wildlife Tracking System uses nano-tags as light as 0.2 grams to track even small birds and insects.
- Based on a collaborative deployment of automated telemetry receivers, Motus can track animals over a broad geographical region to help answer fundamental questions about animal movements, leading to insights that can help protect migratory species as they traverse the landscape.

Satellites and citizen science pinpoint migratory bird refueling stops
- Researchers used satellite images to assess the effectiveness of financial incentive programs for farmers in creating habitat for waterbirds, including ducks, geese, and shorebirds, in California’s Central Valley, where nearly all natural wetlands have been converted to agriculture.
- Observations of 25 waterbird species by hundreds of citizen scientists helped to identify the target zones for water management and to verify the birds’ use of managed areas.
- The satellite data indicated that a severe drought substantially reduced the birds’ open-water habitat and that the incentive programs created more than 60 percent of available habitat on specific days during the migrations.
- The researchers state that remotely sensed data can be used effectively to track water availability and regularly update water and wetland managers on how much habitat is available and where, so they can coordinate water management activities.

Cheap prices lead to more exotic pets in the wild, research finds
- New research shows that exotic amphibians and reptiles sold inexpensively as pets are more likely to end up in the wild, where they can pose problems for native wildlife.
- The authors of the study believe that many pet owners may not fully understand the responsibility of owning these animals, some of which can grow to large sizes and live for decades.
- They suggest that limiting the numbers of certain species popular as pets could help limit their often-destructive impact on ecosystems.

Online citizen science data platforms help scientists predict species ranges
- Researchers paired museum collection information for two species of spiders, dating back several decades, with more recent information from online citizen science databases and compared them to climate data to find areas with conditions suitable for each species.
- They developed maps of predicted geographic distributions for each species and, despite limited data, their findings suggest ranges of both species have shifted northward over time.
- The researchers highlight the importance of citizen science data in generating long-term data sets on species distributions.

Tracking tools identify regional hubs of whale shark activity
- Researchers tracked 17 juvenile whale sharks tagged at three sites in the Philippines to understand how their movements related to food sources and fishing grounds in Southeast Asia.
- They found that juvenile sharks moved quickly and widely through the Bohol and Sulu seas but remained near their feeding sites within Philippine waters.
- In combination with other studies, these findings suggest that locally focused whale shark conservation efforts are critical and must consider the movements juvenile whale sharks make within zones of several hundred square kilometers.

Implicit gender, racial biases may hinder effectiveness of conservation science, experts warn
- Implicit gender and racial biases are just as prevalent in the conservation science community as elsewhere, experts say, and could be harming the effectiveness of the work being done, particularly in developing countries.
- The mostly male and Western scientists working in this field may be shutting out important contributions from local researchers and practitioners in tropical developing countries, as well as preventing a diversity of perspectives in the scientific literature.
- Having a diverse team and being inclusive at every step, especially in the decision-making process for a conservation project, are some of the ways to resolve these biases, the researchers suggest.

Citizen science makes easy work of penguin time-lapse image bounty
- A multinational research team has deployed time-lapse cameras at various penguin breeding colonies to enable a widespread, long-term study of these top predators in the Antarctic ecosystem.
- Volunteers have played a critical role in processing the millions of images resulting from the multi-year study to better understand reproductive behavior and nest success rates across the Antarctic Peninsula, South Shetland Islands, and South Georgia.
- Citizen scientists can help produce large data sets needed to train artificial intelligence algorithms.

Cities worldwide use photo app technology to compete in nature observation challenge
- The third-annual City Nature Challenge takes place this weekend, April 27-30, 2018, giving nature lovers in cities around the globe a chance to compete against other cities to see who can make the most observations and find the most species of local plants and animals.
- Residents and visitors from nearly 70 cities will use their smartphones and the iNaturalist app to share photos of their findings over the 4-day period; experts will verify the identifications in early May.
- Organizers hope the event will connect more people to their local urban biodiversity and uncover threatened and invasive species in new locations, to assist local resource managers.

Powering cameras and empowering people
- Keeping equipment running in harsh field conditions can challenge any tech project, as can working successfully with volunteers.
- Mongabay-Wildtech spoke with leaders of one project, wpsWatch, that deploys connected camera traps to monitor wildlife and people in reserves and employs volunteers to monitor image feeds from afar.
- Powering equipment for field surveillance and “making it part of everyone’s day” enable the rapid image detection, communication, and response by ground patrols needed to successfully apprehend wildlife poachers using cameras and other sensors.

New app hopes to reduce wildlife deaths on India’s roads, railway lines
- Roadkills, a newly launched Android app, lets users in India record information on deaths of animals — both domestic and wild — on roads or railway lines, and upload geotagged photos.
- Such roadkill data can be useful for both researchers and people planning infrastructure projects across the country, conservationists say.
- The app data can help identify what sections of roads and railway lines animals use the most, for instance, which could in turn help guide measures that would reduce or prevent wildlife deaths.
- Warning: Some photos may be disturbing or graphic.

10 top conservation tech innovations from 2017
- The increased portability and reduced cost of data collection and synthesis tools have transformed how we research and conserve the natural world.
- Devices from visual and acoustic sensors to DNA sequencers help us better understand the world around us, and they combine with online mapping platforms to help us monitor it.
- New online and mobile apps have democratized data collection, inspiring a brave new world of citizen scientists to learn about the species around them, contribute to conservation and scientific discovery, and feel part of a learning community.
- Here, we present 10 tech trends we covered in 2017, in no particular order, that have helped us better understand nature, monitor its status, and take action to protect it.

Mammal diversity may increase carbon storage in rainforests
- Having a diverse mix of mammals may play a more pivotal role than expected in the carbon cycle of tropical forests, by feeding microbes that lock the carbon from food scraps in the soil.
- Hundreds of indigenous research technicians collected data for this study across an area roughly the size of Costa Rica.
- Conserving mammal species will become increasingly important in efforts to protect the health of rainforest ecosystems, researchers suggest.

Citizen scientists around the world are monitoring elephants in Gabon via camera traps — and you can too
- Camera traps have proven to be a powerful tool in conservationists’ arsenal for monitoring forests and wildlife. But the mountains of data they capture need to be sifted through in order to be useful, which often presents a significant challenge for cash-strapped conservationists and researchers.
- To meet this challenge, a team led by Anabelle Cardoso, a PhD candidate at Oxford University in the UK, has turned to another promising new method that is reshaping the way research is done in modern times: citizen science.
- Slow population growth and the ivory poaching crisis have driven down the numbers of African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in recent years. “We want to conserve these beautiful creatures, but to do that effectively we need to know where these elephants are and how many of them there are, so we can pick the best places to focus our efforts,” Cardoso and her colleagues write.

Crowdsourcing the forest for the trees
- A pair of drones and the efforts of nearly 3,000 volunteers are helping scientists study tree canopies within a Peruvian rainforest, representing a new paradigm of crowdsourced research.
- Citizen scientists in the Amazon Aerobotany project helped analyze over 5,700 aerial images to count trees and monitor their leafing, flowering, and fruiting cycles.
- Ensuring the quality of data collected using citizen science takes planning, effort, and time but can harness the experience of a world of new collaborators.

Citizen scientists use mobile apps to help “green” the ocean
- Marine debris litters beaches and underwater habitats across the globe, even in remote areas, where it harms hundreds of animal species, from corals to whales.
- Mobile phone apps have launched to encourage and assist volunteers in cleaning up marine habitats by facilitating the recording and sharing of their efforts via social media.
- Volunteers also become citizen scientists, as the apps compile data from thousands of clean-ups into global databases to permit analysis of trends in trash composition and distribution and to bring to light the damage being done by debris to marine creatures and systems.

App combines computer vision and crowdsourcing to explore Earth’s biodiversity, one photo at a time
- The nearly 500,000 users in the iNaturalist network have uploaded over 6.5 million photo observations of more than 120,000 species of plants, animals, insects and fungi.
- The network provides a platform for collaboration and discussion among users, while also generating a stream of research quality biodiversity data.
- A recent update to the smartphone app utilizes computer vision to provide immediate taxonomic identifications for user-submitted photos, with varying degrees of specificity.
- The computer vision network requires a large database of identified images to learn the distinctive features of each species; every photo observation uploaded to iNaturalist and identified by the community helps to improve the coverage and accuracy of the automatic identification feature.

Scientists combine crowd-sourced field observations with land-use and climate models to identify steps for migratory bird protection
- Scientists used crowd-sourced data from the eBird platform to model how the distributions of 21 migratory bird species change throughout the year and to determine how these distributions overlap with protected areas and projected changes in climate and land-use.
- They found that the conversion of natural forest to agricultural and/or urban land uses will eliminate habitat in the near term, particularly in the birds’ tropical overwintering areas, while rising temperatures and diverse changes in rainfall would affect all points of the species’ ranges over the longer term.
- The researchers suggest that enhanced management of less strictly protected reserves in the birds’ wintering grounds could mitigate the near-term forest habitat losses where the birds spend nearly 60% of their time and perhaps give species time to respond to longer-term climate-related changes in food and habitat availability.

Open-source species location data supports global biodiversity analyses
- The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is now the largest biodiversity database in the world with records of hundreds of millions of occurrences of over 1.7 million species, ranging from bacteria to blue whales.
- Institutions from over 50 countries contribute species occurrence and related data to the open-access platform, which make possible regional or global-scale analyses of data ranging from global distributions to invasive species and climate change impacts.
- As GBIF and other collaborative, open-source data bases continue to expand and mature, so will their usefulness to a greater range of scientific studies.

Low-tech challenges to high-tech forest monitoring: lessons from Ugandan parks
- Remote sensing technology can provide useful intelligence to park managers but must be combined with an understanding of its limitations, as well as the tools and training needed for its use.
- An assessment by park rangers in Uganda of satellite image-based deforestation alerts found that the alert locations at 30 m x 30 m resolution were sufficiently accurate to support reserve management.
- The near real-time alerts of likely deforestation could make forest patrols more efficient and effective, but rangers must still have proper training, incentives, and resources to properly integrate alerts into their regular functions.

Story-telling app and website help communities improve their ‘backyards’
- The TIMBY reporting platform applies the wide range of knowledge and experience of journalists, scientists, technologists, designers and security experts.
- Originally developed in Liberia to curb some of the impacts of illegal logging, the design and function of the TIMBY platform has been customized to fit the needs of the people facing conservation issues other locations.
- TIMBY has been used across the globe to address a wide array of issues, including environmental conservation in Chile, women’s health in Kenya, and information dissemination in Liberia.

Soil research aided by citizen scientists, boots and all
- Researchers in England tested a novel approach to detect pathogens in the environment, combining citizen science and lab analysis.
- They related the presence of Campylobacter bacteria, consistently detected through boot socks worn by volunteers walking outdoors, to environmental variables and probable sources.
- Their findings highlight the potential for using field data collected by citizen scientists to assess the presence and transmission of pathogens and other particles in the environment.

An evolving IUCN Red List needs to be both innovative and rigorous (commentary)
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species guides conservationists in their race against extinction by assessing the threats faced by species around the globe. Over 86,000 have been assessed so far.
- A recent Biological Conservation study suggested that using citizen science data in Red List assessments could help estimate the range bird species inhabit more accurately. When it comes to the importance of citizen science, IUCN couldn’t be more in agreement with the authors of the study.
- But just as it is important to embrace cutting-edge technologies, it is also fundamental to respect the rigorous system for assessing extinction risk for the Red List. Ramesh et al. made a fundamental error by confusing two definitions normally used in assessments.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Mexican ecologist José Sarukhán wins 2017 Tyler Prize
- Sarukhán co-founded Mexico’s biodiversity agency, CONABIO, in 1992
- CONABIO is the largest national biodiversity database in the world, with over 11.2 million specimens
- He accepts the award at a ceremony in Washington, DC, May 4, 2017

Overestimated range maps for endemic birds in India’s Western Ghats lead to underestimated threats, study finds
- In a paper published earlier this week in the journal Biological Conservation, researchers detail their findings that suggest the IUCN has “vastly” overestimated the geographic range sizes for 17 of 18 endemic birds studied in the Western Ghats.
- In some cases, the researchers write in the study, the range maps supplied by BirdLife International (BLI) and used by the IUCN for its threat assessments of birds in the Western Ghats included “large areas of unsuitable habitat” and were so off that the threat status should be changed “for at least 10 of the 18 species based on area metrics used by the IUCN for threat assessment.”
- The head of the IUCN Red List says that the study’s authors made a “fundamental error” in applying threat assessment criteria to their datasets, however, adding that just two of the 10 birds identified in the study need to be examined more closely.
- The key to the updated range maps created by the researchers behind the Biological Conservation study is citizen science. In particular, the researchers used data from eBird, an online checklist program created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. And on the point of the usefulness of citizen science, the researchers and the IUCN are in full agreement.

The March for Science makes its stand: “There is no Planet B”
- On Saturday, April 22nd tens of thousands of protestors defied bone chilling rain to march on Washington D.C., while fellow marchers protested at “March for Science” events across America and around the world.
- The D.C. march, attended by prominent scientists and supporters of science, was held in opposition to the anti-science policies of Congress and the Trump administration — which has proposed draconian cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency, and a virtual shutdown of U.S. climate research.
- Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, summed up the purpose of the march: “to insure that policy is informed by an objective assessment of scientific evidence.“
- Caroline Weinberg, co-founder of the U.S. March for Science, noted that: “Science extends our lives, protects our planet, puts food on our table [and] contributes to the economy.… [P]olicymakers threaten our present and future by ignoring scientific evidence.”

Wildbook: a social network for wildlife
- Wildbook is an open-source software platform that helps collaborative projects store and manage wildlife data. The user-friendly interface makes it easy for citizen scientists to contribute animal photos to be used as data for scientific studies.
- Wildbook uses the Image Based Ecological Information System (IBEIS) to semi-automatically analyze the photos and determine, based on an animal’s unique markings, if it is a new individual or an animal already in the database.
- The compiled images can help scientists assess species distributions, movement patterns and human-wildlife interactions, which, in turn, can support management and conservation decisions.

How citizen science is transforming river management in Malaysian Borneo (commentary)
- For thousands of years Sabah’s Kinabatangan River has wound its way down from the hills of Borneo’s northern interior through some of the planet’s richest lowland rainforests before flowing into the Coral Triangle.
- Crises in ecosystems unfold over time. In the late twentieth century, events up-river brought massive change in the Kinabatangan’s catchment.
- It is the growth of citizen science around systematic water quality measurement, carefully targeted (by indigenous knowledge) in the places and moments that matter in complex rapidly changing watersheds, that appears to offer the best way to identify and tackle the causes and to guide river restoration.
- This post is a commentary based largely on presentations at Sabah’s International Heart of Borneo and Ramsar conferences in November 2016 — the views expressed are those of the author.

KEDR: Watching over the cedar forests of the Russian Far East
- KEDR uses an algorithm to automatically analyze real-time satellite images for various canopy changes to provide forest managers precise logging intelligence so they can quickly counteract violations.
- The technology could help conserve the critically endangered Amur tiger and leopard that inhabit these forests.
- KEDR is now being implemented in two provinces and has been recommended for use throughout the country. The tool will continue to be developed with technological upgrades, high-precision satellite imagery, new algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Beyond data collection — the social and political effects of environmental sensor proliferation
- Sensors are increasingly collecting data everywhere, changing how we relate to and manage the environment.
- These data answer researchers’ scientific questions but can also generate social, cultural and political effects, reinforcing the need for more data.
- In a new book, “Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet,” Dr. Jennifer Gabrys suggests that the future of environmental management is a question of how and whether to “program” the Earth.

Citizen science leads to snail rediscovery in Vietnam
- Scott Trageser took pictures of several species of invertebrates he encountered on Hon Cau island, part of an archipelago off the southeast coast of Vietnam, and posted them on citizen science website iNaturalist, hoping that an expert somewhere in the world might be able to identify the specimens and benefit from his observations.
- Then, in November 2015, that’s exactly what happened. Trageser was contacted by Junn Kitt Foon, a Malaysian malacologist who specializes in the snails of Southeast Asia.
- Junn had identified one of the species captured on film by Trageser as Myxostoma petiverianum, a snail that had not been seen in over a hundred years. No photo of a live specimen had ever even been taken before.

A World of Tings
- Created in 2012, Latest Sightings is a mobile app and social network with a community between 450,000 and 500,000 people.
- Latest Sightings allows app users to report real-time sightings within South African parks and promotes conservation and education through online platforms.
- Wildlife sighting apps have faced recent criticism, but Latest Sightings CEO and Founder Nadav Ossendryver explains that these apps are saving wildlife and globally educating millions of wildlife enthusiasts.

Empowering smartphone users to bear witness to illegal wildlife trade
- The Wildlife Witness app allows travelers and locals to anonymously and securely report wildlife trafficking they observe in Southeast Asia.
- As the first app for global community action against illegal wildlife trade, it allows tourists and regional residents to assist wildlife law enforcement and endangered species conservation.
- The app encourages people to use the internet and other avenues to speak up against and learn more about wildlife trafficking and their own role in countering it.

Want to identify that bug or beetle in your photo? Ask the crowd.
- The iSpot web application allows users to post photos of plants and animals and receive crowdsourced help in identifying the species they’ve captured in photos
- The network connects novices with experts and allows users to gain and improve their reputation for familiarity with a group of species.
- The project aims to increase biodiversity knowledge through informal learning and community input while expanding information on species distributions.

iBats: Emerging tools for acoustic surveys and species identification
- Bats pollinate trees, disperse seeds, and eat insects, but most populations are declining due to hunting, spreading disease, and habitat loss.
- Scientists typically identify bats by their calls and want to standardize monitoring techniques to help reduce the natural variation in calls by the caller’s age, gender, and activity.
- iBats offers a free app that records, geo-locates, and uploads bat vocalizations to its web portal for use by scientists and others interested in exploring bat distributions and population trends.

Studying the unloved through the wisdom of crowds
- Crowdsourcing for conservation generally involves collecting information, opinions, or labor from groups of people rather than from individual employees or experts.
- The technique is being applied in dozens of studies on fish, amphibians, invertebrates, birds, mammals, and other life forms, as well as landscapes, and is increasingly being accepted into the scientific literature and conservation databases.
- Nevertheless, doubts about the quality of crowdsourced data persist.

Citizen scientists help demystify Serengeti’s wildlife with photos

Africa’s Serengeti conjures up romantic images of millions of migrating wildebeest and zebras, prides of lions feasting on their prey, and hyenas prowling in the background. But not everyone is fortunate to see them up close. Snapshot Serengeti, a citizen science project, is changing that. It lets anyone, with or without a background in science […]
Citizen scientist site hits one million observations of life on Earth

This is what a million observations of species in nature look like mapped out over the world. Image courtesy of iNaturalist. On Friday, Jonathan Hiew from Singapore took a photo of several insects and uploaded them on the citizen scientist site, iNaturalist. Little did he know that one of the photos, of a butterfly, would […]
Amazonian students help monitor threatened frog populations

The 2013 Zoos and Aquariums: Committing to Conservation (ZACC) conference runs from July 8th—July 12th in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by the Blank Park Zoo. Ahead of the event, Mongabay.com is running a series of Q&As with presenters. For more interviews, please see our ZACC feed. Forest bromeliad treefrog (Osteocephalus cabrerai). Photo by: Marcy Sieggreen. […]
Tourism for biodiversity in Tambopata

Map, Bahuaja Sonene National Park, Grasshopper Mimicking a Wasp. Photo by: David Johnston. Research and exploration in the Neotropics are extraordinary, life-changing experiences. In the past two decades, a new generation of collaborative projects has emerged throughout Central and South America to provide access to tropical biodiversity. Scientists, local naturalists, guides, students and travelers now […]

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