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Data management and processing tools / Feed

Conservation tech work doesn't stop after data is collected in the field. Equally as important to success is navigating data management and processing tools. For the many community members who deal with enormous datasets, this group will be an invaluable resource to trade advice, discuss workflows and tools, and share what works for you.

discussion

The Boring Fund 2024 - MoveApps

Anne K Scharf

17 January 2025 12:54pm

 We are honored to be among the winners of The Boring Fund 2024! Thank you WILDLABS and Arm for selecting our project.MoveApps is a free no-code analysis platform for...

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Anne K Scharf

2 April 2025 12:15pm

We are pleased to inform you that we have now finalized point 2 and 3. Here some details of the update:

  • App browser improvements:
    • Improved overview and search: we have added a description of each category and
      the search and filtering options are improved.

    • Searching for Apps within a Workflow: we have added the option to include Apps
      that are not compatible with the IO type, making it easier to decide if a translator
      App is needed to include one of the incompatible Apps.

       

  • Public Workflows improvements:
    • Improved overview: the public Workflows are now organized by categories which
      can be also used for filtering.
    • More information: the details overview contains now the list of Apps included in
      each Workflow.
    • Sharing Workflows: when creating a public Workflow you will have to select one
      or more existing categories, but you can also always request a new category.

Go and check it out in MoveApps!

Anne K Scharf

16 May 2025 12:20pm

We are please to inform that we have implemented the point 1 and 4 and with this have finalized the project. The latest improvements:

  • Improvement in findability of help documentation: we have started to populate the platform with links (question mark icon) to the relevant
    sections of the user manual.
  • The log files of each App can now be downloaded and when an error occurs directly be sent to MoveApps support. Find more details here.

Again a great thank you for giving us the opportunity to implement these changes. We think they have greatly improved the user friendliness of MoveApps

 

 

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discussion

Prospective NSF INTERN 

Frank Short

11 February 2025 10:00am

Hello all,My name is Frank Short and I am a PhD Candidate at Boston University in Biological Anthropology. I am currently doing fieldwork in Indonesia using machine-learning...

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Dora Summers

8 May 2025 8:51am

My name is Frank Short and I am a PhD Candidate at Boston University in Biological Anthropology. I am currently doing fieldwork in Indonesia using machine-learning powered passive acoustic monitoring focusing on wild Bornean orangutans (and other primates). I am reaching out because as a student with a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, I am eligible to take advantage of the NSF INTERN program which supports students to engage in non-academic internships through covering a stipend and other expenses, with the only caveat being that the internship must be in-person and not remote. I was wondering if any organizations in conservation technology would be interested in a full-time intern that would be coming in with their own funding? 

In addition to experience with machine learning and acoustics through training a convolutional neural network for my research, I also have worked with GIS, remote sensing, and animal movement data through other projects. Further, I have experience in community outreach both in and outside of academic settings, as I previously worked for the Essex County Department of Parks and Recreation in New Jersey for 3 years where I created interpretive signs, exhibits, newsletters, brochures, and social media posts. Now while doing my fieldwork in Indonesia, I have led hands-on trainings in passive acoustic monitoring placement and analysis as well as given talks and presentations at local high schools and universities. 

I would love to be able to use this opportunity (while the funding still exists, which is uncertain moving forward due to the current political climate in the US) to exercise and develop my skills at a non-academic institution in the conservation technology sphere! If anyone has any suggestions or is part of an organization that would be interested in having me as an intern, please contact me here or via my email: fshort@bu.edu geometry dash. Thank you!

Hi Frank, your work sounds incredibly valuable and well-aligned with current needs in conservation tech. With your strong background in machine learning, acoustics, GIS, and outreach, you’d be an asset to many organizations. I’d recommend looking into groups like Rainforest Connection, Wildlife Acoustics, or the Conservation Tech Directory (by WILDLABS)—they often work on acoustic monitoring and might be open to in-person internships, especially with funding already in place. Best of luck finding the right match—your initiative is impressive!

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discussion

No-code custom AI for camera trap images!

Justin Chung Clark

25 April 2025 8:33pm

Thanks to our WILDLABS award, we're excited to announce that Zamba Cloud has expanded beyond video to now support camera trap images! This new functionality...

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Kim Hendrikse

28 April 2025 7:03am

When you process videos, do you not first break them down into a sequence of images and then process the images ? I'm confused as to the distinction between the processing videos versus images here.

Justin Chung Clark

28 April 2025 3:57pm

We do, but the way the models handle the images differs depending on whether they're coming from videos or static images. A quick example: videos provide movement information, which can a way of distinguishing between species. We use an implementation of SlowFast for one of our video models that attempts to extract temporal information at different frequencies. If the model has some concept of "these images are time sequenced" it can extract that movement information, whereas if it's a straight image model, that concept doesn't have a place to live. But a straight image model can use more of its capacity for learning e.g. fur patterns, so it can perform better on single images. We did some experimentation along these lines and did find that models trained specifically for images outperformed video models run on single images.

Hope that helps clear up the confusion. Happy to go on and on (and on)...

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discussion

The boring fund: Standardizing Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) data - Safe & sound

Sanne Govaert

27 January 2025 3:47pm

Thanks to the Boring Fund, we are developing a common standard for Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) data.Why it’s important: PAM is rapidly growing, but a core bottleneck is the...

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Julie Oswald

8 February 2025 11:00pm

This is such an important project! I can't wait to hear about the results. 

Tessa Rhinehart

12 February 2025 4:15pm

Hey Sanne, awesome - we definitely need a consistent metadata standard for PAM.

If you haven't already, I would suggest sharing this on the Conservation Bioacoustics Slack channel and the AI for Conservation Slack channel. You would reach a lot of active users of PAM, including some folks who have worked on similar metadata efforts. 

If you're not a member of either one of those, DM me your preferred email address and I'll send you an invite!

Julia Wiel

7 April 2025 11:07pm

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for your contribution!

You can read some updates about this project in this post.

Julia

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article

Nature Tech for Biodiversity Sector Map launched!

Carly Batist and 1 more

1 April 2025 1:41pm

Conservation International is proud to announce the launch of the Nature Tech for Biodiversity Sector Map, developed in partnership with the Nature Tech Collective! 

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Frank van der Most

4 April 2025 1:57pm

Thanks for sharing @carlybatist  and @aliburchard !About the first point, lack of data integration and interpretation will be a bottleneck, if not death blow to the whole...
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funding

Multiple grants

Frank van der Most

28 March 2025 1:42pm

I have been a bit distracted the past months by my move from Costa Rica to Spain ( all went well, thank you, I just miss the rain forest and the Ticos ) and have to catch up on funding calls. Because I still have little...

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discussion

Nature Tech Unconference - Anyone attending?

Elsa Carla De Grandi

8 March 2025 12:11pm

Hi all, anyone planning to attend the Nature Tech Unconference on 28th March at the London School of Economics Campus in London, UK? (the event is free to attend but...

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Matt Rogers

21 March 2025 12:07pm

The Futures Wild team will be there :)

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discussion

Generative AI for simulating landscapes before and after restoration activities

John Hartshorn

26 March 2025 1:59pm

Hi all.Has anyone come across any generative AI tools that could be trained and used to generate photorealistic landscapes (in a web application) from habitat maps and then re-...

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discussion

United Nations Open Source Principles

Pen-Yuan Hsing

13 March 2025 4:13pm

FYI, I just came across the United Nations Open Source Principles, which was recently adopted by the UN Chief Executive Board’s Digital Technology Network (DTN): It has been...

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Vance Russell

25 March 2025 11:54am

All sound, would be nice if there were only 5, though!

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discussion

Standard Threshold for "Habitat Use" in Avians?

Cortney Dean

7 March 2025 9:05pm

Hi all!Background: I did bioacoustic sampling at 12 sites, roughly 18 days of recording at each site, over the course of a season (both birds and bats). In reviewing our species...

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Walter Zimmer

9 March 2025 7:47am

Is that not a statistical question and depending in the classification performance of the SW (Birdnet), which itself may depend on the species and the variability of the call? 

I, myself, have no practical experience with Birdnet, but use a commercial product that derives from Birdnet and found in about 1000 days, for example,  the following tail statistics (22 x 1), (12 x 2), (6 x 3), (5 x 4) bird detections. In total, 223 different species were classified, with black birds being on top with 149000 detections. Overall, there seems to be a nearly exponential decay of different bird detections, which to me shows a problem with NN-based classifications, as there seems to be no clean separation between 'signal' and 'noise', as one can find in traditional signal processing. 

From these statistics (histogram) I would conclude that in the end there is no meaningful threshold, as there is no meaningful 'misclassification floor' that could be used to define a threshold.

Consequently, you may have to consider context, inspect every suspect snippet and let human decide. 

Tessa Rhinehart

11 March 2025 2:44pm

Hey Cortney, this is such a good question! 

First off - I'd be very careful about interpreting the number of BirdNET detections of a species as a vocalization index for that species. For example, let's say a recorder captures a lot of Species A, which sounds like Species B,  but Species B isn't present at that site. You will often find that BirdNET (or any other sound ID model) reports many detections for Species B and Species A, making it seem like both species are present. So, the number of detections of a species at a site isn't necessarily a more reliable indicator of species presence at that site.

One alternative to consider would be to verify species presence at each site and each day, then use the number of days that species was present as a threshold for habitat use. What threshold to use depends on the species - we've used three consecutive days of presence for some songbirds, for instance.

You could also remove dates when the species is expected solely to be migratory. However, this can get tricky... For example, I've observed that Cerulean Warblers that breed at a particular site will arrive there a week or two before migrants pass through at nearby non-breeding migration hotspots.

Doing a day-by-day analysis of presence enables you to more easily check machine learning detections than if you were checking for the number of detections for each species. You can verify the presence of the species at each site and day by listening to the highest-scoring clips for each day for each species. 

If you have 18 days of recording * 12 sites and you listen to the top 5 highest-scoring clips per species and day, that's a maximum of 1,000 five-second clips per species. In my experience, reviewing that amount of clips takes me only a few hours using a Jupyter notebook like this one:

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event

Do more with Data: Online Workshop

Nalini

11 March 2025 9:12am

Are you looking to make better use of data in your work? Nature FIRST is organising a free online workshop exploring how technology, data, and collaboration can enhance conservation efforts. No prior data experience is...

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discussion

Sea turtle Bioacoustics Project

Sam Jamil

17 February 2025 8:16pm

Hi everyone, I have an opportunity to work with Green sea turtles and Olive ridleys off the coast of Sri Lanka, this will be my first bioacoustics conservation project. I would...

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Claudia Lacroix

7 March 2025 12:47pm

Hi Sam, I  did my master's on hatchling turtle vocalisations and their role in nest emergence behaviours (currently under review for publication). I recorded nest emergence behaviour in-situ using microphones and camera traps. I worked with snapping turtles, but the methods could be quite useful. I would be happy to share my thesis if that would be helpful.

there are a few sea turtle papers that describe hatchling vocalisations but not many experiments testing hypotheses for these vocalisations. 

here are some papers that could help you get you started:

Shoot me a message if interested in chatting more :)

 

M Zahirul Islam

7 March 2025 1:32pm

Hello Sam ...great work, would like to see the paper when it comes online. I would like to know about the device....Bests Zahir

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discussion

The 100KB Challenge!

Dan

7 February 2025 11:47am

If you could send/receive 100KB of data from anywhere on the planet via satellite; what would you send?I work for a company called Ground Control, we design, build and manufacture...

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Dan

20 February 2025 9:13am

Nice one - what kind of thing would you use this for? 

~500mA peak current, it has a similar power profile as the current RockBLOCK product, in that it needs lots of juice for a for a small period of time (to undertake the transmission) we include onboard circuitry to help smooth this over. I'll be able to share more details on this once the product is officially launched!

 

Dan

20 February 2025 9:13am

~500mA peak current, it has a similar power profile as the current RockBLOCK product, in that it needs lots of juice for a for a small period of time (to undertake the transmission) we include onboard circuitry to help smooth this over. I'll be able to share more details on this once the product is officially launched!

 

Nuno Cesar de Sa

20 February 2025 9:31am

Hi Dan, 

Not right now but I can envision many uses. A key problem in RS is data streams for validation and training of ML models, its really not yet a solved problem. Any kind of system that is about deploying and "forgetting" as it collects data and streams it is a good opportunity. 

 

If you want we can have a talk so you tell me about what you developed and I'll see if it fits future projects.

 

All the best

 

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