topic: Software

topic: Software

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Gundi tool gets conservation hardware and software talking the same language
- A new open-source platform aims to help conservationists and protected-area managers seamlessly integrate data between hardware and software tools.
- Currently being used at 600 sites, Gundi takes data from different sources — wildlife trackers, camera traps, acoustic monitors — transforms them into a common format, and sends them to different destinations for analysis.
- Gundi was developed with the goal of helping reduce the time and effort required to figure out compatibility issues between different conservation technology tools.

New toolkit identifies multiple species from environmental DNA
- Researchers have developed a DNA analysis toolkit designed to speed the identification of the multiple species in a biological community by analyzing environmental DNA from a sample of water or soil.
- To confirm the presence of a species at a site, the tool compares its genetic barcode (short DNA sequence) to barcodes of known species in one of several reference databases.
- The toolkit’s advantage is its ability to quickly process many barcode sequences, at multiple analysis locations on the gene, that enable it to identify the species of the DNA sequences of many organisms at the same time.

Film that fish: Stereo-video speeds surveys of marine fish communities
- Researchers use underwater visual surveys to assess the sizes of fish in marine communities and their associated habitats, but diver-based data collection is time-consuming and requires expertise, and results may vary among different data collectors.
- A multinational research team recently published the first guide to help researchers using diver-operated stereo-video methods (stereo-DOVs) to standardize surveys of fish assemblages (species and their abundances) and their associated habitat.
- The video provides a permanent, shareable record of each survey transect, including the species and numbers of fish seen, while the stereo option allows researchers to measure fish using overlapping images.
- The guide provides information on appropriate equipment; designing a stereo‐DOV if needed; operating it during underwater studies; processing the video data after collection; and analyzing fish behavior, population features and habitat in the resulting video.

Virtual Reality 360-degree video: An “empathy-generating machine” for conservation outreach?
- New video technology that films in 360 degrees brings viewers into the middle of the action and is set to become a powerful outreach tool to build understanding and empathy for wildlife and wild places.
- Small off-the-shelf cameras rugged enough to film in the wild are relatively inexpensive, easy enough for field researchers and other filming novices to use, and sufficiently sophisticated to collect videos of resolutions higher than 5 megapixels.
- At a recent presentation at National Geographic, four VR-360 filmmakers strongly endorsed the technology as a tool to inspire and nurture empathy in viewers for a range of conservation issues.

Tech prize encourages solutions to threats from invasive species
- The second round of the Con X Tech Prize offers 20 awards of $3,500 each, plus the chance to win the $20,000 grand prize, to help beginning inventors develop their ideas for solving conservation problems into prototypes.
- The challenge particularly encourages interdisciplinary teams to generate technological ideas to address the threats to economies and ecosystems from invasive species, though it welcomes submissions to help other conservation challenges as well.
- Teams must submit their proposals by March 13, 2019 to the Conservation X Labs Digital Makerspace.

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.

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.

Hackathon enlightens coders and conservationists alike
- In late October, 125 computer science students from across the United States gathered at JPMorgan Chase’s Jersey City office for the Code for Good hackathon.
- At this competition, a panel of environmental non-profits presented issues, such as promoting sustainable behavior and tracking park visitor patterns, as prompts for teams of students to construct digital prototypes.
- Creating software to address resource use and conservation challenges can both inspire computer engineers to engage in social and environmental activism and provide instrumental products for conservation.

AI simplifies statewide study of leopards in south India
- A six-year study of leopards in the wildlife-rich southern Indian state of Karnataka, using grids of motion-sensor camera traps across the state, suggests the big cats are thriving in a variety of habitats and land uses.
- The researchers’ use of machine-learning algorithms significantly reduced the workload needed to identify 363 individual leopards from the sample’s 1.5 million camera-trap images. The figure indicates there are an estimated 2,500 leopards living in Karnataka.
- Although a forest department official said the state was unlikely to expand its protected forests in the foreseeable future, the researchers said such a policy was necessary for leopard conservation, stressing that the proximity of natural landscapes to agricultural fields allows leopards to use those unprotected areas.

Innovative ideas sought for new conservation tech prize
- The non-profit Conservation X Labs has launched a competition aimed at encouraging teams with diverse skillsets to propose novel technology solutions to conservation challenges.
- The competition offers prizes of $3,500 to 20 finalists — who will compete for a grand prize of $20,000 — based on the proposed solutions’ novelty, sustainability, and feasibility.
- Applicants must submit their proposals by June 30, 2018, and winners will be announced in July.

This tiny camera aims to catch poachers — before they kill
- A Tanzanian game reserve has successfully tested the TrailGuard cryptic camera and 24/7 electronic surveillance system to detect and capture wildlife poachers and their snares.
- The system uses image recognition algorithms and real-time image transmission to help the often limited patrolling staff of many protected areas identify and respond to potential poachers along trails before they kill their target animals.
- Despite some difficulties with installation and the algorithms, the TrailGuard units in Tanzania have photographed 40 reserve intruders, including poachers or trespassers, resulting in the arrests of 13 suspects.
- The designers are currently developing a new, lower-cost version of the system to be built later this year that they expect will address the difficulties and be more widely available.

One-stop shop for digital global maps launched
- A new online platform called Resource Watch makes over 200 geographically referenced global-scale data sets available for viewing and analysis.
- You can view and overlay spatial data layers on your own or explore analyses produced by the platform’s research staff.
- The developers hope that assembling a broad collection of environmental, economic, infrastructure, and social data in a single platform will promote understanding of the connections between human activities and natural systems and encourage more sustainable decision-making.

From galaxies far, far away to endangered species just over the hill
- Astrophysicists and conservation ecologists have teamed up to apply the heat-detection software and machine-learning algorithms used to find stars to automatically identify people and different animal species.
- The system detects warm, living objects from drone-derived thermal video footage and uses a reference database to identify the various objects efficiently and reliably.
- The research team is refining the system to overcome challenges of variable environmental conditions, as well as hot rocks and other “thermally bright” but uninteresting objects, while building a reference database of multiple target species.

You don’t need a bigger boat: AI buoys safeguard swimmers and sharks
- A new tech-driven device may help reduce harmful interactions with sharks and improve people’s tolerance of one of the ocean’s top predators.
- The system, called Clever Buoy, combines sonar to detect a large object in the water, artificial intelligence to determine that the object is a shark close enough to threaten beachgoers, and automated SMS alerts to lifeguards that enable them to take action.
- Local governments have deployed the system at popular beaches and surfing sites to test its capacity to protect swimmers and surfers without harming marine wildlife.

AI can ‘help us move mountains’ for people and planet, Watson developer says
- IBM Master Developer Neil Sahota believes artificial intelligence (AI) can help humanity ‘move mountains’ in terms of improving lives and the environment.
- Sahota helped develop Watson, the supercomputer which is now being used in a variety of useful ways, like predicting crop yields for farmers in Africa.
- In this interview with Mongabay, he shares multiple examples of AI being used by actors ranging from the UN to NASA and NGOs, for good.

Coral reef monitoring takes to the skies: drone-mounted hyperspectral cameras help scientists assess health of coral reefs
- Hyperspectral images taken from cameras on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are helping scientists survey the composition and health of coral reefs under the water.
- These images capture information from visible (light) and non-visible sections of the electromagnetic spectrum thereby offering information the human eye can’t see.
- When paired with UAVs or satellites, hyperspectral images allow researchers to survey the reef habitats–including coral, sand, and algae–over large areas as well as monitor the health of individual corals.

Drones enable fast, accurate wildlife counts, study shows
- Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have great potential for surveying wildlife, especially species that assemble in large numbers and that are easily disturbed by human presence.
- Scientists creatively combined high-tech UAVs and computer-vision algorithms with rubber ducks to assess the potential of aerial imagery to count seabirds relative to traditional survey methods.
- They found that both human and semi-automated computer counts of colony-nesting birds from UAV-derived images were more accurate and less variable than counts made by observers on the ground.
- Combining UAV-derived imagery with artificial intelligence can help scientists more accurately estimate population sizes with less variability.

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.

Whistleblowing for wildlife
- The National Whistleblower Center (NWC)’s new Global Wildlife Whistleblower Program is launching a secure website and attorney referral service to help people provide tips on wildlife crime and obtain rewards from whistleblower provisions in relevant laws.
- The program combats wildlife extinction by incentivizing potential whistleblowers to come forward and submit tips confidentially and anonymously.
- To increase the platform’s impact, the NWC is ramping up outreach and hoping to develop an app in 2017 to facilitate mobile reports.

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.

EGI: Filling in the gaps in law enforcement for the online wildlife trade
- Enforcement Gaps Interface (EGI) uses a computational algorithm to mine hundreds of commercial sites for ads potentially containing illegal wildlife and wildlife products.
- EGI aims to help law enforcement agencies, retailers and nongovernmental organizations reduce and ultimately eliminate rampant online wildlife trafficking.
- EGI’s creators are further developing it to incorporate more languages and image recognition into its searches.

END LOOP: Coding to end wildlife trafficking
- The first ever Zoohackathon will convene this October 7-9 across six zoos in the US, Europe, Asia and Pacific.
- The hackathon aims to produce tech solutions to the increasingly rampant global challenge of wildlife trafficking.
- Visit www.zoohackathon.com to register or contact [email protected] or [email protected] for more information on getting involved.

e-Eye of the tiger: Complex surveillance system extends watch over India’s wildlife sanctuaries
- e-Eye is a large-scale intelligent technology capable of 24/7 all-weather, live-feed wildlife surveillance in vulnerable areas and sanctuary perimeters, collecting and interpreting wildlife crime data to alert law enforcement before violations occur.
- The anti-poaching apparatus secures protected areas by helping monitor hard-to-access regions, detect intruders, manage patrols and keep rangers accountable. It also helps reserve managers study wildlife.
- Its developers and users hope to expand it to other domestic and international reserves to protect more tigers and other threatened species, such as elephants.

Participatory Mapping in the Mobile Age
- The Kogi people have a unique spiritual and ecological connection with the forests they live in, but the forest is now under threat from gold mining, agriculture, and human development.
- The Amazon Conservation Team is piloting an open-source phone app (ODK) to help the Kogi gather data and create geo-referenced maps of their land
- ACT and the Kogi plan to use the detailed digital maps to protect sacred and ecologically important sites from deforestation, and reclaim traditional land holdings.

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