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Geospatial data and analysis is critical for conservation, from planning to implementation and measuring success. The Geospatial group focuses on all aspects of this field, from field surveys to remote sensing and data development/analysis to GIS systems.

Group curators

Vance Russell
Over 35 years of experience in biodiversity conservation worldwide, largely focused on forests, rewilding and conservation technology. I run my own business assisting nonprofits and agencies in the conservation community
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event

AniMove Summer School 2025

Brigitta Keeves

21 May 2025 1:08pm

AniMove is a collective of international researchers with extensive experience in the topics of animal movement analysis, remote sensing and conservation. The AniMove Workshop is a two-week intensive training course for...

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discussion

Planet Imagery is no longer available on GFW

Elsa Carla De Grandi

15 May 2025 2:15pm

Hi all, as you may have noticed, sadly Planet mosaics and historical imagery were removed from GFW on April 1, 2025. Currently the Planet Monthly Mosaics (only available over...

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Carly Batist

18 May 2025 8:37pm

The loss of the free NICFI tropics data has been a huge loss for us at CI. We have many teams that were using it for lots of different use cases. If anyone has alternatives, we would love to hear about them! Just looking at what we can get from Sentinel/Landsat now. 

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article

Fires in the Serengeti: Burn Severity & Remote Sensing with Earth Engine

Vance Russell

29 April 2025 6:16pm

Fires in Serengeti and Masai Mara National Parks have burned massive areas this year. With Google Earth Engine, it's possible to quantify burn severity using the normalized burn ratio function, then calculate the total...

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Vance Russell

1 May 2025 11:44am

This was originally presented on 24 April, 2025 as part of a Geospatial Group Cafe. We will post the recording and highlights from other speakers of that session soon!
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discussion

From Field to Funder: How to communicate impact?

Léa Smadja

16 April 2025 3:51pm

Conservation involves a mosaic of actors — field practitioners, local communities, funders, government agencies, scientists, and more.Each one needs different levels of...

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Frank van der Most

17 April 2025 5:04pm

Great questions @LeaOpenForests !

I don't have concrete answers since I am not a stakeholder in any project in particular. Based on experience with research on the potential for a similar one-stop-shop for science metrics, I would suggest that there is no simple solution: different actors do need and have different views on presenting and viewing impact. This means possible gaps between what one group of actors need and what the other is willing or able to produce. One can hope, search and aim for sufficient overlap, but I don't see how they would necessarily or naturally overlap.

Still, I would guess that if there are dimensions of overlap, they are time, space and actor-networks 

Amber Balfour-Cunningham

28 April 2025 3:18pm

I have posted about this in a different group, but I love boosting the impact of my communication through use of visuals. 

Free graphics relating to conservation technology and the environment are available at:

  1. National Environmental Science Program Graphics Library

    Graphics below of a feral cat with a tracking collar and a cat grooming trap are examples of symbols available courtesy of the NESP Resilient Landscapes Hub, nesplandscapes.edu.au.

  2. UMCES Integration and Application Network Media Library
Feral cat with tracking collar courtesy of the NESP Resilient Landscapes Hub, nesplandscapes.edu.au

Cat grooming trap graphic courtesy of the NESP Resilient Landscapes Hub, nesplandscapes.edu.au

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event

Geospatial Group Café (April)

Elsa Carla De Grandi and 2 more

15 April 2025 11:38am

Are you ready to dive into the world of geospatial technology for conservation? Join our vibrant community for an exciting virtual event where we explore cutting-edge geospatial datasets, tools and innovative projects....

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Vance Russell

21 April 2025 4:59pm

Hi Folks, Don't forget to register for the Geospatial Cafe!Best,Vance
Elsa Carla De Grandi

23 April 2025 9:17am

Agenda:Vance Russell (3point.xyz)Leanne Tough (Research Officer, Wetland Landscapes and Processes - WWT)Dr Kuria Thiongo (Director, Centre for Spatial...
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discussion

Evaluation of Global Forest Watch 

Iain McNicol

17 March 2025 4:51pm

Hello all, First of all, I want to introducte myself as a new member of the Wildlabs community.  My name is Iain McNicol and I am the Programme Manager for the Centre...

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Elsa Carla De Grandi

9 April 2025 8:05pm

Hi @iainmcnicol , welcome to WILDLABS! Thanks for posting this on here. I have shared with my colleagues at Fauna & Flora who have some experience (especially with the deforestation alerts) and could maybe provide feedback as well. We also have a page on 'The Inventory' where we're asking people to review various data products, tools, platforms etc including one for Global Forest Watch. As you can see not many reviews currently so it would be great (if possible by anonymising responses etc.) to get the information from your survey and translate this into something we could add to 'The Inventory' for the wider community. Let me know your thoughts on this!

Also is there a closing date for the survey?

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article

Application of computer vision for off-highway vehicle route detection: A case study in Mojave desert tortoise habitat

Alexander J Robillard

8 April 2025 2:30pm

Driving off-highway vehicles (OHVs), which contributes to habitat degradation and fragmentation, is a common recreational activity in the United States and other parts of the world, particularly in desert environments...

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Vance Russell

24 April 2025 9:24am

Fantastic and thank you! It will be very interesting to see how these tools can be applied to other species and anthropomorphic features!
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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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olivier rovellotti

26 March 2025 7:50pm

Yep we are working on it 

 

Read "#berlin #ia #paysage #naturetech #solutionsfondéessurlanature #greentech… | Olivier Rovellotti 🌍 | 11 comments" on

#berlin #ia #paysage #naturetech #solutionsfondéessurlanature #greentech… | Olivier Rovellotti 🌍 | 11 comments

🌿 Quand la Technologie Devient L'alliée du Paysagiste 🌍 🎨 Imaginer & Générer Grâce à l’IA générative (Stable Diffusion, Segment Anything), on peut imaginer #Berlin plus verte et tester différents scénarios d’aménagement. Une nouvelle manière d'explorer les possibles, en s’inspirant des principes des plus grands (McHarg, Clément, Burle Marx). 🌳💡 https://lnkd.in/g-uM7d-k 📚 Apprendre Les plateformes comme NBS EduWORLD rendent les solutions fondées sur la nature plus accessibles à tous. https://lnkd.in/gnBTkyN5 🔎 Cartographier & Anticiper Des outils comme ecoTeka permettent d’identifier les espaces à renaturer en croisant données SIG et IA. Cartographie, suivi des arbres, calcul des services écosystémiques… https://lnkd.in/daTBxbwn 🔗 Réfléchir: Dans "Harnessing generative AI to support nature-based solutions", Sandra Lavorel et Al nous donne des pistes d'explorations pour aller plus loin https://lnkd.in/gSH6Au9s 💬 Et vous ? 🌱🤖 #IA #Paysage #NatureTech #SolutionsFondéesSurLaNature #GreenTech #Biodiversité #NBSEduWorld #FosterTheFuture #TeachFromNature #NatureBasedSolutions #ClimateChange #STEM | 11 comments on LinkedIn

1/ segment 

2/remote unwanted ecosytem

3/get local potential habitat

4/generate

5/add to picture 

 

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event

Cloud-Native Geospatial Conference

Earthmover

26 March 2025 3:40pm

CNG Conference is where geospatial data users gather to create the future of our industry together. Learn how experts at NOAA, Planet, the World Bank, and others are using geospatial data and AI to solve some of the...

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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

Mole-Rat Mystery. Can anyone help?

Sean Hill

19 March 2025 3:25pm

Good afternoon everyone! I am currently doing a personal study on Cape Dune Mole-Rat (Bathyergus suillus) activity in my free time along an estuary. I do not know...

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Jocelyn Stalker

20 March 2025 4:17pm

Hi Sean! I love that you are naturally curious and are pursuing really cool projects in your free time. I know absolutely nothing about cape dune mole rats (in fact, never heard of them prior to this post, but I will confess I was interested in the concept of a mole-rat mystery), but I did have some thoughts about where you might find more information-

It seems like the types of questions you are asking are pretty specific and niche. My first thought on how to find someone with expertise in these specific rodents was to go to their iNat page- there you can see the top observer and top identifier. Both individuals are active researchers, so I think reaching out to them on iNat or finding their e-mails from their respective organizations' sites might be a good way to get in touch.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1986.tb03570.x

I also did a quick search in Google Scholar in which I typed in only the scientific name and hit go. The two publications linked above caught my eye as potentially helpful in your search- particularly the first one. They excavated burrows and noted things like home range size, that males have more burrows than females, etc. I didn't go much beyond the abstracts but these seem like they might get you on the right tracks!

Happy ratting!

Sean Hill

25 March 2025 8:36am

Good morning Vance

Thank you very much! I am looking into some papers that I was kindly directed to by Jocelyn Stalker ( her comment below) and am looking for ways to establish population dynamics just by looking at the mounds. Once I have figured this part out I should be able to correlate the information to the drone data. The Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) for this project is very small, 1.3cm per pixel. This has proven to be very useful because I am able to use the very fine 3D models to run change detections that pick up new heaps and vegetation reductions (which may be due to feeding) on a weekly basis. It helps not only visualise but also quantify where the most activity has occurred. I will keep you posted!    

Sean Hill

25 March 2025 8:47am

Good morning Jocelyn

Thank you very much for your comment, this is proving to be very useful advice and thank you so much for setting me on the right path!! This is very exciting!!

They are the most extra ordinary little creatures and as I don't know much about them either, I thought I'd try learn as much as I can (not just through literature, but through my own observations as well). I walk past these mounds daily and am always intrigued when I see more mounds and really enjoy watching them actively push the dune sand up to the surface (you don't see the wee fellas but you can watch the sand move as they burrow away). One afternoon while flying my drone (I was quantifying the changes in sediment deposition and erosion volumes in the estuary after a flood that was soon followed by a super high tide), I had a heap between my legs and all of a sardine it starts moving! So that sparked my curiosity even further. 

I will keep you posted on my findings and thank you again for the papers and the direction! It is greatly appreciated!!

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