WILDLABS logoWildlabs.net : The conservation technology network

WILDLABS logoWildlabs.net : The conservation technology network

Group

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.

careers

Data Manager, Conservation International

Esther Githinji

8 July 2024 2:40pm

Conservation International are seeking a data expert to help (a) serve as a day-to-day technical project manager to ensure data collection, data management, and data quality control with global program teams and...

2
See full post
Link

EarthRanger: How high-tech tracking is keeping tabs on wildlife | CNN

Esther Githinji

5 July 2024 10:40am

EarthRanger use in Northern Kenya's Sera Conservancy by veterinarians to track and monitor rhinos.

2
discussion

Question About Interpolation

Raul Castillo

18 June 2024 10:52pm

Hello! I am a Computer Science Student experimenting with the multi-step models on TensorFlow's "Time series forecasting" tutorial.I am applying to the models the positional data...

1 0
Larry O'Brien

28 June 2024 6:35pm

The use of synthetic training data such as interpolated sequence values is common, but fraught with the issue of your synthetic signal generating features that are not true to real life. 

Instead, you might think about about appending the values of two long-period sin waves per input element to the sequence going in to your first linear / fully-connected layer. The simplest thing that could possibly work would be to interpret minute of the day and day of the month as the values of your sin wave! (Or perhaps minute/hour if all training sequences are quite short.) Since you’re doing sequence prediction, you would add the appropriate values for each image(?) in the sequence being evaluated.   

With that additional signal going in to the model in the early layers, the NN should have a good chance of learning that the differences in the modulating signal corresponds to distance in time. 

This technigue was popularized by early Large Language Models to encode the distance between words. There’s been refinement (search “Rotary Encoding” for instance) but the basic idea of sin waves generalizes well.

See full post
discussion

'recurse' R package help

Zach Ng

17 June 2024 11:49pm

Hi all!  I am researching the spatio-temporal movements of reintroduced eagles, using the recurse package in R Software (developed by Bracis et al. - using the bird 'Leo...

1
See full post
article

NEW PUBLICATION ALERT!

Consolata Gathoni Gitau

17 June 2024 11:33am

One of the most thrilling moments for any researcher is seeing their hard work published for the world to see. As part of the Women in Conservation Technology (WiCT) Kenya Cohort One, we not only learnt about the use of...

2 4
Esther Githinji

17 June 2024 12:57pm

Congratulations Consolata!!! So exciting to read this :)
Sarah Maagi

17 June 2024 7:40pm

Many congratulation Consolata for such a milestone.
See full post
discussion

Fauna & Flora: Bridging geospatial data and people together for enhanced conservation management

Stephanie O'Donnell

17 April 2024 11:31am

Hi folks!@Chelsea_Smith from Fauna & Flora joined last month's variety hour to share more about Fauna & Flora's work with geospatial data. I invited her along as I thought...

2 1
Aaron Kennedy

13 June 2024 8:51pm

This is amazing! Thank you for sharing. I'm speaking on this topic at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in October. If you have any other resources on this topic, let me know! Closing the loop for "Science to Action" is a huge part of the work we do so I'm always looking to learn. 

See full post
article

New WILDLABS Funding & Finance group

Frank van der Most

5 June 2024 3:24pm

WildLabs will soon launch a 'Funding and Finance' group. What would be your wish list for such a group? Would you be interested in co-managing or otherwise helping out?

3 4
Alex Rood

5 June 2024 4:14pm

This is great, Frank! @StephODonnell, maybe we can try to bring someone from #Superorganism (@tomquigley ?) or another venture company (#XPRIZE) into the fold!
Paul Edonga

6 June 2024 1:38am

I find the group to be dope, fundraising in the realm of conservation has been tough especially for emerging conservation leaders. There are no centralized grants tracking common...
See full post
discussion

Drop-deployed HydroMoth

Sol Milne

2 April 2024 10:20am

Hi all, I'm looking to deploy a HydroMoth, on a drop-deployed frame, from a stationary USV, alongside a suite of marine chemical sensors, to add biodiversity collection to our...

4 1
Sol Milne

15 April 2024 6:53am

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for your advice, this is really helpful!

I'm planning to use it in a seagrass meadow survey for a series of ~20 drops/sites to around 30 m, recording for around 10 minutes each time, in Cornwall, UK.

At this stage I reckon we won't exceed 30 m, but based on your advice, I think this sounds like not the best setup for the surveys we want to try.

We will try the Aquarian H1a, attached to the Zoom H1e unit, through a PVC case. This is what Aquarian recommended to me when I contacted them too.

Thanks for the advice, to be honest the software component is what I was most interested in when it came to the AudioMoth- is there any other open source software you would recommend for this?

Best wishes,

Sol
 

Matthew Duggan

21 April 2024 7:10pm

Hey Sol, 

No problem at all. Depending on your configuration, the Audiomoth software would have to work on a PCB with an ESP32 chip which is the unit on the audiomoth/hydromoth, so you would have to make a PCB centered around this chip. You could mimic the functionality of the audiomoth software on another chip, like on a raspberry pi with python's pyaudio library for example. The problem you would have is that the H1A requires phantom power, so it's not plug and play. I'm not too aware with the H1e, but maybe you can control the microphone through the recorder that is programmable through activations by the RPi (not that this is the most efficient MCU for this application, but it is user friendly). A simpler solution might be to just record continuously and play a sound or take notes of when your 10 min deployment starts. I think it should last you >6 hours with a set of lithium energizer batteries. You may want to think about putting a penetrator on the PVC housing for a push button or switch to start when you deploy. They make a few waterproof options. 

Just somethign else that occured to me, but if you're dropping these systems, you'll want to ensure that the system isn't wobbling in the seagrass as that will probably be all you will hear on the recordings, especially if you plan to deploy shallower. For my studies in Curacao, we aim to be 5lbs negative, but this all depends on your current and surface action. You might also want to think about the time of day you're recording biodiversity in general. I may suggest recording the site for a bit (a couple days or a week) prior to your study to see what you should account for (e.g. tide flow/current/anthropogenic disturbance) and determine diel patterning of vocalizations you are aiming to collect if subsampling at 10 minutes. 

Cheers, 

Matt

Alex Rogers

3 May 2024 12:55pm

Hi Sol,

If the maximum depth is 30m, it would be worth experimenting with HydroMoth in this application especially if the deployment time is short. As Matt says, the air-filed case means it is not possible to accurately calibrate the signal strength due to the directionality of the response. For some applications, this doesn't matter. For others, it may.

Another option for longer/deeper deployments would be an Aquarian H2D hydrophone which will plug directly into AudioMoth Dev or AudioMoth 1.2 (with the 3.5mm jack added). You can then use any appropriately sized battery pack.

If you also connect a magnetic switch, as per the GPS board, you can stop and start recording from outside the housing with the standard firmware.

Alex

See full post
discussion

WILDLABS AWARDS 2024 - Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring (UPAM) for threatened Andean water frogs

Mauricio Akmentins

30 March 2024 3:54pm

In our project awarded with the "2024 WILDLABS Awards", we will develop the first Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring (UPAM) program to assess the conservation status and for...

5 15
Liz Ferguson

7 April 2024 6:09pm

This is so cool @Mauricio_Akmentins - congrats and look forward to seeing your project evolve!

Herdhanu Jayanto

1 May 2024 5:17pm

Congratulations! My first hydromoth was just arrived yesterday and so excited! Looking forward for the update from your project!!!

See full post
article

Introducing The Inventory!

Jake Burton

1 May 2024 12:46pm

The Inventory is your one-stop shop for conservation technology tools, organisations, and R&D projects. Start contributing to it now!

9 15
Jake Burton

22 July 2024 10:55am

Hi @hjayanto ! I've given your account the ability to edit without earning the badge just to save time while we figure out why you aren't getting your Sprout Badge, so you should...
Herdhanu Jayanto

23 July 2024 2:05pm

Thank you @JakeBurton . Looks like I wasn't in community base group, instead misunderstood it was the same as thematic group. I have added our organization. Appreciate your help!
See full post
careers

Ecologist Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Alex Rood

23 April 2024 4:32pm

The incumbent will develop models and metrics that can be used to shape conservation policy using multiple data sources including camera traps, movement data and citizen science concerning the diversity and...

0
See full post
discussion

Newt belly pattern for picture-matching

Xavier Mestdagh

18 April 2024 3:57pm

Hi!We are investigating the ability to use belly pattern of Great crested newts (Triturus cristatus) at larval stage for picture-matching in capture-recapture studies. Do...

6 2
Adrien Pajot

19 April 2024 10:31am

Cool project! (I would definitely match with the second photo on your example). Might be a project that you can run on Zooniverse instead of a Google Form? https://www.zooniverse.org/
Henry Rees

19 April 2024 4:14pm

Hi Robin this is a great idea! Have been thinking about approaching the community for quiz questions. Will reach out to Xavier to ask if we can use it or if he wishes to run it on next Wednesdays VH

Xavier Mestdagh

22 April 2024 11:27am

Thanks, and that's a match! 

All these pictures are from a lab experiment and formated with AmphIdent. We took weekly belly pictures of several larvae. The aim of this google form is to validate (by comparing answers with the lab reference image base) picture-matching by human is reliable although the change of pattern can be verry quick at this life stage.  

If validated there will be the need to improve existing pattern-matching solutions for in situ observations of larvae, for instance with ML and/or Human Learning (thanks Zooniverse)...     

See full post
discussion

Camera Trap storage and analyzing tools

Vasilios Kosmakos

16 April 2024 5:15pm

Hello everyone I am a current Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay and am working with a local national park to create a camera trap project. A large part of the project is focused...

2 1
Dan Morris

16 April 2024 7:17pm

I don't have an easy solution or a specific recommendation, but I try to track all the systems that do at least one of those things here:

https://agentmorris.github.io/camera-trap-ml-survey/#camera-trap-systems-using-ml

That's a list of camera trap analysis / data management systems that use AI in some way, but in practice, just about every system available now uses AI in some way, so it's a de facto list of tools you might want to at least browse.

AFAIK there are very few tools that are all of (1) a data management system, (2) an image review platform, and (3) an offline tool.  If "no Internet access" still allows for access to a local network (e.g. WiFi within the ranger station), Camelot is a good starting point; it's designed to have an image database running on a local network.  TRAPPER has a lot of the same properties, and @ptynecki (who works on TRAPPER) is active here on WILDLABS.

Ease of use is in the eye of the beholder, but I think what you'll find is that any system that has to actually deal with shared storage will require IT expertise to configure, but systems like Camelot and TRAPPER should be very easy to use from the perspective of the typical users who are storing and reviewing images every day.

Let us know what you decide!

Carly Batist

17 April 2024 1:55am

Can't beat Dan's list! 

I would just add that if you're interested in broader protected area management, platforms like EarthRanger and SMART are amazing, and can integrate with camera-trapping (amongst other) platforms. 

See full post