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AI for Conservation / Feed

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in the field to analyse information collected by wildlife conservationists, from camera trap and satellite images to audio recordings. AI can learn how to identify which photos out of thousands contain rare species; or pinpoint an animal call out of hours of field recordings - hugely reducing the manual labour required to collect vital conservation data.

discussion

Connection needed!

Alice Marks

15 November 2022 4:23pm

Hi everyone -- I'm hoping to connect with a woman who is based in Asia (South or South East Asia) and is working on AI / machine learning to prevent and reverse environmental...

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Frank van der Most

22 November 2022 2:46pm

Maybe she is not based in Asia, but you could check Lily Xu, who gave a presentation at the IUCN World Congress a year ago on using AI against poaching in Cambodia. The project is called Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security (PAWS).

For a summary of this project and another ( presented by a man ) see 

Read "Machine Learning against poaching and illegal logging – Rubber Boots Data" on Rubber Boots Data

Machine Learning against poaching and illegal logging – Rubber Boots Data

At the IUCN's World Conservation Congress I ran into two applications of machine learning (ML) to guard protected areas against direct detrimental human activity. Both stories are success stories but also both applications are in their early phases. In this post, I will compare the two and ask a couple of common sense questions that…

Rubber Boots Data • 07 Oct 2021
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article

Dear AI, We Have Trust Issues

Dave Thau

14 November 2022 11:09pm

This essay is the third in a series on the promise and challenges of using AI and machine learning to create a planetary environmental management system.  

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careers

Spatial Data Analysis, TNC

The Nature Conservancy

8 November 2022 11:34am

Working with a team of conservation practioners, scientists, and technologists, the Spatial Data Analyst uses leading-edge earth observation data in new and effective ways to inform conservation practice locally,...

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Link

New paper: Integrating machine learning, remote sensing and citizen science to create an early warning system for biodiversity

Carly Batist

7 November 2022 7:10pm

Opinion paper describing "how data acquired from remote sensing, citizen science & other monitoring approaches could feed in near-real time to an early warning system for biodiversity that integrates automated red-listing of species with the identification of priority areas...

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https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ppp3.10337
discussion

ConservationAI

ConservationAI

20 October 2022 2:41pm

The conservation AI platform allows you to upload your media for automatic species detection using our trained AI models. The platform uses cutting edge computer vision techniques...

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Carly Batist

20 October 2022 7:32pm

Out of curiosity, what are the similarities/differences between your platform and other image classification ones such as Wildlife Insights, WildID, ZambaCloud? I don't mean that in like a "what's best" way, just would be great to better understand the the details so that people can assess what to try for their specific use cases & applications!

It would be great to have a comparative specs sheet of sorts! Peter Gyurov started something like that: https://www.notion.so/Camera-Trap-Pipeline-Solution-Comparison-2eac80825c4941b0b2b5fad3daea1cc3. Would be great to add ConservationAI to this list!

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article

Audio Across Domains Workshop 2022

Tessa Rhinehart

3 October 2022 7:54pm

A collaborative and cross-disciplinary meeting of audio data scientists spawns creative research collaborations 

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Carly Batist

3 October 2022 11:40pm

Are there any papers you/anyone would recommend discussing or utilizing the representation learning you discuss in the 'Frontiers in data analysis methods' section of your summary...
Justin Kitzes

11 October 2022 2:05pm

Maybe not precisely what you're looking for Carly, but Dan Stowell's new paper in PeerJ is a great introduction to computational methods that are being and could be applied to...
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Link

New paper - Rookognise: Acoustic detection & identification of individual rooks in field recordings using multi-task neural networks

Carly Batist

3 October 2022 2:35pm

Authors developed system to acoustically identify individual animals (under varying conditions) using combo of multi-scale information integration, multi-channel audio & multi-task learning. Tested on captive group of rooks.

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Link

New paper - FathomNet: A global image database for enabling artificial intelligence in the ocean

Carly Batist

27 September 2022 9:44pm

Open-source image database that standardizes & aggregates expertly curated labeled underwater data, enabling AI in the ocean. Seeded with existing imagery of marine animals, underwater equipment, debris, etc. & allows for future contributions from distributed data...

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Read "FathomNet: A global image database for enabling artificial intelligence in the ocean | Scientific Reports" on Nature

FathomNet: A global image database for enabling artificial intelligence in the ocean | Scientific Reports

The ocean is experiencing unprecedented rapid change, and visually monitoring marine biota at the spatiotemporal scales needed for responsible stewardship is a formidable task. As baselines are sought by the research community, the volume and rate of this required data collection rapidly outpaces our abilities to process and analyze them. Recent advances in machine learning enables fast, sophisticated analysis of visual data, but have had limited success in the ocean due to lack of data standardization, insufficient formatting, and demand for large, labeled datasets. To address this need, we built FathomNet, an open-source image database that standardizes and aggregates expertly curated labeled data. FathomNet has been seeded with existing iconic and non-iconic imagery of marine animals, underwater equipment, debris, and other concepts, and allows for future contributions from distributed data sources. We demonstrate how FathomNet data can be used to train and deploy models on other institutional video to reduce annotation effort, and enable automated tracking of underwater concepts when integrated with robotic vehicles. As FathomNet continues to grow and incorporate more labeled data from the community, we can accelerate the processing of visual data to achieve a healthy and sustainable global ocean.

Nature
discussion

Conservation Tech Directory - new update!

Carly Batist

29 August 2022 2:38pm

New directory update from @gracieermi & I! And an extra special one as we've just passed our 1-year anniversary! Super exciting to see how far this has come! Check it out:...

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Liz Ferguson

23 September 2022 5:26pm

Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!

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discussion

Mangrove soundscape

Camilo Sierra F.

27 August 2022 4:57pm

Hello everyone, I am currently working on the restoration of mangroves in an area of Colombia. I want to do an acoustic monitoring inside the mangrove. I want to record...

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Carly Batist

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.  

 

David Savage

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.

Liz Ferguson

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: 

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