Read more: 

• The problem with innovation challenges
• Project Rattlecam. Read more about Project Rattlecam founder Emily Taylor’s work using conservation tech with snakes on WILDLABS here.

• Individual haplotyping of whale sharks from seawater environmental DNA (June 2021)

• eDNA sampled from stream networks correlates with camera trap detection rates of terrestrial mammals

Carly's in case you missed it:

• New Species on WildMe: new wildbooks (Grouper Spotter, Salamander Wildbook), ML support now for bobcats, clouded leopards, ocelots, great white sharks, Indo-pacific humpback whales, bottlenose dolphins 

• SeaBee: establish drone-based infrastructure for scientific research in Norway (pilot training, data storage, ML algorithms, specs/data standards, etc.) 

• Reckoning with elitism & racism in conservation: Mongabay article, interview with Colleen Begg, South African conservationist

• Underwater AI detection: created by Jake Easterling of Scubotics, upload videos and ID the fish you saw! 

• Evidensia.eco: From WWF, Rainforest Alliance & iseal; effort to make credible evidence about impacts & effectiveness of market-based sustainability approaches accessible to inform policy & practice 

• CarbonPlan: non-profit that analyzes climate solutions, builds open tools/resources for evaluation & deployment of them, improving transparency & scientific integrity of carbon remocal 

• DevelopmentSeed: engineering & product company accelerating application of accessible geospatial analysis (Cloud Geo), planetary AI, etc. to make evidence-based decisions that benefit the planet 

• Remotely monitoring honeybees: Best Bees Company installs hives on commercial and residential properties (pays property owners) & use software system to monitor and record colony health, data shared with researchers

• GoodAI community: “empowering companies that use AI to help deliver on SDG’s”; online discussion boards, company directory, job board, responsible AI resources 

• Highest resolution global map released: from Impact Observatory, Esri & Microsoft AI for Earth; using Sentinel-2 imagery at 10-m resolution & image segmentation CNN (UNet)

• Brazil’s wildlife forensics initiative: Amazonas state using isotope ratio mass spec to detect geographic origin of animals (captive-bred vs wild-caught, and where in the wild), products (timber, gold, etc.)

• ConservationAI: UK ngo detecting & classifying animals, evidence of illegal activity from pictures and thermal images collected by camera traps, drones (can use 3/4G comm’s for real-time monitoring); upload data to site, models (TensorFlow automatically run them and give you analytics dashboard 

• New Analytics Lab from Conservation Science Partners (US non-profit): develop & prototype software, computational environments & data products to monitor land use, analyze ecosystems, develop climate change projections, etc. 

• eBioAtlas: from NatureMetrics & IUCN; creating global atlas of life for Earth’s rivers & wetlands using eDNA; interfaces with IUCN RedList & GBIF; freely available 

• Global Environmental Crime Tracker: from the Environmental Investigation Agency; central public database of illegal wildlife & timber activity (pulls from publicly available info, media coverage); currently for Asia, Africa & Europe

Here's one that I thought was interesting. It's unfortunately straight out of a research lab so it's not commercially available, but it would be interesting to see what the smallest or lightest device to fulfill a specific function can be made using commercially available technologies. 

Snails carrying the world’s smallest computer help solve mass extinction survivor mystery

Read more: 

• eDNA sampled from stream networks correlates with camera trap detection rates of terrestrial mammals (2020) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-90598-5

• Other related resources:

  • eBioAtlas: partnership between NatureMetrics and IUCN to rapidly create a global atlas of the world's freshwater biodiversity using  eDNA https://ebioatlas.org/

  • WILDLABS eDNA virtual meetup talks: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWcz3iwCnCqSyyZh7Wc3pbvtmJ-4CJcLt

  • Industry guidelines: https://www.naturemetrics.co.uk/2021/05/11/industry-brief-edna-to-manage-biodiversity-risk/

•  

   

  WomBot: an exploratory robot for monitoring wombat burrows: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-021-04595-4

•  

   

  SNAPSHOT USA 2019: a coordinated national camera trap survey of the United States : https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3353

• Studying Killer Whale Behaviour with Drones

  • ​Article: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/06/killer-whales-form-killer-friendships-new-drone-footage-suggests

  • Video: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-57486901

  • Research Paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.0617

     

Read more:

• The G.AI.A series: Artificial Intelligence and Planetary-Scale Environmental Management, @davethau: https://medium.com/g-ai-a

• Dave Thau’s talk at the WILDLABS Virtual Meetup about Big Data in Conservation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixhGqPGxtb8&list=PLWcz3iwCnCqTOdY5AGWdxcv9gczUpmvmG&index=31&t=1s  

• Annotation Interface for Data-driven Ecology (AIDE) version, Benjamin Kellenberger -https://github.com/microsoft/aerial_wildlife_detection, Paper: https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13489

• A standardisation framework for bio-logging data to advance ecological research and conservation, Sequeira et al: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.13593

• Slope does not affect autonomous recorder detection shape: considerations for acoustic monitoring in forested landscapes, Shaw, Muller, and Scherer-Lorenzen, University of Freiburg: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tbio20

@carlybatist 's in Case You Missed It

• Platform to green supply chains – chocolate maker Barry Callebaut funds EcoVision’s new sat-imagery carbon map based on to help companies avoid deforestation in their supply chains (https://news.mongabay.com/2021/06/chocolate-giant-funds-high-resolution-carbon-map-to-protect-forests/)
• Business Alliance to Scale Climate Solutions – SalesForce, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, UNEP, EDF, WWF (https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/556706-tech-entertainment-giants-joining-environmental-groups-un-to-reduce)
• Trase platform – data-driven transparency initiative; supply chain mapping, commodity & trade sustainability assessments, accountability for environmental impacts (https://www.trase.earth/) 
• Conservation optimism! – 2 islands in the Galapagos declared invasive-rat-free thanks to grid of drone-deployed bait traps (https://www.islandconservation.org/invasive-rodents-no-longer-threaten-wildlife-seymour-norte-island-mosquera-islet/) 
• Digital Service for the Planet – 30+ conservation org’s join Environmental Policy Innovation Center to call for federal program aggregating resources currently spread out among different and pursue other AI & tech solutions (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/creating-digital-service-planet-timothy-male/) 
• SafetyNet Technologies – offering free advisory sessions to anyone in fishing industry (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzAHai4OaEEIIU7le0eiNVISD4dAJbJrF4rb1JBjA6ikdNlg/viewform)
• PalmOil.io – for businesses to identify deforestation in their supply chain and track environmental risks from suppliers (https://palmoil.io/)

Check out this update for a sneak peek at early results and more info about why this research matters. Do you agree with the trends so far? Let us know on the survey.