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Geospatial / Feed

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.

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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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discussion

Conservation remote sensing webinar series

Thomas Starnes

5 October 2018 7:40am

The Conservation Biology Institute is hosting a series of Conservation Remote sensing webinars with the Society for Conservation GIS. This is quite the lineup, so I recommend you...

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event

WILDLABS TECH HUB Showcase

WILDLABS Team

17 May 2019 12:00am

Join us at the Tech Hub Showcase event ot hear how our winners are using technology to scale their solutions to the illegal wildlife trade. The event will take place at Digital Catapult, 101 Euston Road, London, on the...

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article

Meet the WILDLABS TECH HUB Winners

WILDLABS Team

13 May 2019 12:00am

In February, we released an open call for the WILDLABS TECH HUB, offering 3 months of support for solutions using technolgy to tackle the illegal wildlife trade. We were overwhelmed by an incredible 37 submissions,...

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discussion

FOSS4G 2019

Thomas Starnes

12 April 2019 9:36am

Hi GIS-ers, This is a notification that the FOSS4G 2019 conference call for talks and workshops deadline is this coming Monday 15th April. This year's conference is taking...

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discussion

Eye on Earth Symposium Online: All 36 sessions will be webcast globally

Lot Amorós

5 October 2018 10:36am

Hi all, Just to share that this symposium will be available online and most of the sessions are very interesting to willdlabs community. You can check the program here:...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

18 February 2019 10:37am

Following the successful Eye on Earth Symposium at the end of October, the team has announced that video recordings of all 35 sessions are now available.

They've also shared a recording of the Global Environmental Education Partnership webinar: http://bit.ly/EoeWebinars 

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discussion

Sumatran Forest Type Maps and Data

Courtney Dunn

9 January 2019 5:43pm

Anyone know of any good databases or sites to find forest cover maps for Indonesia? I know that is highly specific but, I am looking for maps that show forest type for a...

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discussion

GIS Day 2018

Thomas Starnes

14 November 2018 7:48pm

Today is GIS Day. Today we turned our department foyer into a map gallery to celebrate. The conservation work of the RSPB is reliant on the application of up to date, accurate...

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discussion

Invitation to Contribute to the ISPRS SC Newsletter

Sheryl Rose Reyes

28 August 2018 3:12pm

Hi everyone, I am Sheryl Rose Reyes, Chair of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Student Consortium (ISPRS SC, sc.isprs.org). The ISPRS SC...

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Thomas Starnes

13 September 2018 3:24pm

Hi Sheryl,

This sounds great, thank you for sharing! As you may be aware, we had the UK National Earth Observation Conference 2018 here in the UK just last week (and you can see the abstracts here).

I'll share your call for submissions with colleagues in the Cambridge conservation community, noting your September 21st deadline.

Best wishes,

Thom

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funding

Next Generation Animal Tracking Ideation Challenge

NASA

14 September 2018 12:00am

NASA and The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have launched the Next Generation Animal Tracking Ideation Challenge, seeking your ideas for how to use emerging SmallSat/CubeSat technology along with other Space,...

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discussion

Is anyone using off-the-shelf GIS data collection apps? e.g. Collector for ArcGIS

Steve Pritchard

8 March 2018 5:11pm

The BTO has made some use of phone/tablet apps like AlpineQuest. Esri has showed us Collector for ArcGIS and we're trying it out. Is anyone else using Collector,...

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Aurélie Shapiro

14 March 2018 11:28pm

So Collector is really for editing data, or adding GIS info in the field in a map interface. Works offline. It's ok for that purpose, you can take your entire map, basemap offline to the field, you can see what data has been collected in real-time, but can be buggy and if you accidentelly log out you're completely out of luck with no connection.

I use it to track drone flights - i.e. I flew here, with some notes.

Survey123 is ESRI's solution for ODK or form based surveys. I like it a lot, it's flexible, you don't need people to log in and it just looks better than ODK and works on iOS, and doesn't require the annoying server set-up of ODK and has great offline capability. But it's form-based, you don't really see the data you are editing in a map. But the best part are the analysis features where you can see stats on responses and such.

Let me know if you have more questions, we have used survey123 extensively, also in places where people have limited cell network, and limited knowledge of smartphones.

Stephanie O'Donnell

28 March 2018 12:40pm

Hi Steve, 

Over on Twitter, @RLong has a suggestion that might be useful? 

Dave Moskowitz https://t.co/ZJhAPTgzyx has developed some @ESRI Collector workflows for his work with @ConservationNW. You might get in touch with one of them for advice.

— Robert Long (@RLongEco) March 28, 2018

James Bevan also has some feedback: 

I’ve used iGIS quite a bit to map points, lines and polygons. Created shapefiles can be emailed or stored in Dropbox and transferred to ArcGIS. The paid version also can calculate area and distance. Cons: somewhat fiddly to use.

— James Bevan (@JamesRBevan) April 9, 2018

Cheers

Steph

Sarah Graves

24 August 2018 5:18pm

Hi Steve,

I have used GIS Pro by Garafa on an iPad. I found it was one of the only apps that allowed importing of custom raster images. This feature has allowed me to take an image into the field, and ditize on it directly. I am mapping individual trees in airborne remote sensing data, so accurate digitizatoin with reference to my specific image is a must.

Other useful features are that you can create and edit vectors (points, lines, and polygons) and you cache basemaps (Google, Bing...) to work offline.

Happy to talk more about my application and experience with this app.

- Sarah

 

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article

Spacewalk for ICARUS

WILDLABS Team

24 August 2018 12:00am

This past week was an exciting milestone for animal tracking, with the ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) Initiative's antenna successfully installed on the International Space Station. ...

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event

Ocean Hack: San Francisco, 10-11th September, 2018

One Ocean Collab

20 August 2018 12:00am

A 48 hr pop up innovation lab for the ocean, bringing together a mix of designers, strategists, technologists, engineers, scientists, marine conservationists, educators, artists and buisness talent to co-create...

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discussion

Learning and Training Resources for GIS - contributions welcome!

Thomas Starnes

19 June 2017 3:09pm

Hi everyone, We decided to initiate a thread for sharing and collating GIS training resources. This follows from a thread in the Remote Sensing group. Please feel free to...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

19 June 2017 3:17pm

Thanks for starting this thread, @Thomas+Starnes !

I posted the following twitter conversation in the original Remote Sensing resources thread, yet I think it's possibly more applicable to this thread so am resharing it to make sure it's easily accessible for anyone else looking for GIS specific info in the future. 

Does anyone know of good, free resources for learning to use GIS software? (preferably QGIS) #movementecology

— Stuart Watson (@SkipsAhoi) April 24, 2017

My former uni had a subscription to the QGIS Lynda course which was immensely helpful... may be worth checking https://t.co/sDywDX8Y5b

— Arjun Dheer (@ArjDheer) April 24, 2017

Our gentle intro to #GIS should get you started https://t.co/O87TJiz2zy

— QGIS (@qgis) April 24, 2017

There are some great links here: https://t.co/0T2gHoZ0We. Youtube also has excellent tutorials: https://t.co/x8IkUVqc8O. #mapping #gis #qgis pic.twitter.com/JysA4Din63

— WAAS International (@WAASInt) April 27, 2017

https://t.co/ggPNehh22M

— Gerry Ryan (@silverlangur) June 19, 2017

 

Thomas Starnes

9 October 2017 12:11pm

Hi all,

I just wanted to draw your attention to the new OS Geo UK Training page. This is a really helpful list of GIS training courses on offer in the UK. Anyone can contribute to the list via GitHub.

Thom

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discussion

Alternatives to shapefiles

Steve Pritchard

11 September 2017 1:34pm

I'm used to using ArcGIS and shapefiles, however shapefiles have various restrictions (file size, field width, etc). There are lots of alternative file formats (Esri ref,...

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Thomas Starnes

13 September 2017 5:17pm

This is a very good question, @spritchard, and not one specific to the conservation community. I'd suggest maybe also posting on GIS StackExchange? The shapefile has come to be the standard vector exchange format, but you're right that it's actually proprietary. I guess geoJSON is the open source equivalent and it is actually supported in some Esri applications e.g. ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Online. 

Paulo Cardoso

19 September 2017 8:04pm

Geopackage and geoJSON for general GIS purpose (the fisrt is particularly optimal for storage and sharing) and sf (stands for simple feature) for R environment spatial data manipulation.

Adrian Hughes

4 October 2017 9:34am

I don't think there is an open like for like replacement. I normally work with ESRI software so mainly use Geodatabases now.

Open options are really in the web format realm (GeoJson) or database (PostGIS, SQLLite, SpatialLite. Also there is KML

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