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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.

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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discussion

Jupyter Notebook: Aquatic Computer Vision

Brett Smith

25 January 2024 5:50am

Dive Into Underwater Computer Vision Exploration OceanLabs Seychelles is excited to share a Jupyter notebook tailored for those intrigued by the...

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Arky

26 January 2024 1:46pm

This is quite interesting. Would love to see if we could improve this code using custom models and alternative ways of processing the video stream. 

Brett Smith

27 January 2024 4:07am

This definitely seems like the community to do it. I was looking at the thread about wolf detection and it seems like people here are no strangers to image classification. A little overwhelming to be quite honest 😂

While it would be incredible to have a powerful model that was capable of auto-classifying everything right away and storing all the detected creatures & correlated sensor data straight into a database - I wonder if in remote cases where power (and therefore cpu bandwidth), data storage, and network connectivity is at a premium if it would be more valuable to just be able to highlight moments of interest for lab analysis later? OR if you do you have cellular connection, you could download just those moments of interest and not hours and hours of footage? 

Arky

27 January 2024 6:11am

Am working on similar AI challenge at the moment. Hoping to translate my workflow to wolves in future if needed. 

We all are little overstretched but it there is no pressing deadlines, it should be possible to explore building efficient model for object detection and looking at suitable hardware for running these model on the edge. 

 

 

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discussion

Power managment/Recharging System and Communication System

Om Prakash Yadav

2 January 2024 4:06pm

As we know Power managment/Recharging System and Communication System are chalanges for forest, so any one please suggest the Device and Power source to monitor sound in forest...

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Kim Hendrikse

26 January 2024 9:03am

Power usage for microcontrollers with solar is  much more manageable. For Raspberry Pi's and higher it gets expensive and big.

I'm quite impressed by the specs from the Goal Zero Yeti devices. This can have high capacity and be charged with Solar. Not small though. And the price is not in proportion to the Pi's.

So this 200x model for example, would be close to 16 days running the audio recorder. Let's say 10. without solar. Add solar? Depends on the size of the panels I guess. Power usage for mobile networking? Depends on how much you transmit.

Probably some well documented experiments would be really nice for people here. Sounds like something nice for the next set of grants :)

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discussion

Need advice - image management and tagging 

Ben Nyberg

12 January 2024 7:55pm

Hello Wildlabs,Our botany team is using drones to survey vertical cliffs for rare and endangered plants. Its going well and we have been able to locate and map many new...

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Bill Gray

24 January 2024 5:16pm

I have no familiarity with Lightroom, but the problem you describe seems like a pretty typical data storage and look up issue.  This is the kind of problem that many software engineers deal with on a daily bases.  In almost every circumstance this class of problem is solved using a database.

In fact, a potentially useful analysis is that the Lightroom database is not providing the feature set you need.

It seems likely that you are not looking for a software development project, and setting up you own DB would certainly require some effort, but if this is a serious issue for your work, you hope to scale your work up, or bring many other participants into your project, it might make sense to have an information system that better fits your needs.

There are many different databases out there optimized for different sorts of things.  For this I might suggest taking a look at MongoDB with GridFS for a couple of reasons.

  1. It looks like you meta data is in JSON format.  Many DBs are JSON compatible, but Mongo is JSON native.  It is especially good at storing and retrieving JSON data.  Its JSON search capabilities are excellent and easy to use.  It looks like you could export your data directly from Lightroom into Mongo, so it might be pretty easy actually.
  2. Mongo with the GridFS package is an excellent repository for arbitrarily large image files.
  3. It is straightforward to make a Mongo database accessible via a website.
  4. They are open source (in a manner of speaking) and you can run it for free.

Disclaimer: I used to work for MongoDB.  I don't anymore and I have no vested interest at all, but they make a great product that would really crush this whole class of problem.

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discussion

Information to the young who are the future

CathyNj

8 January 2024 4:35pm

All our efforts in conservation will be beneficial mostly to the the young. How are you making available your works to them? I try to provide information in simple and fun way to...

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discussion

What is your favorite package or software for visualizing animal tracking data?

Lacey Hughey

12 September 2023 6:52pm

Hi all,I manage a large research collaborative focused on conservation applications of animal tracking data (Smithsonian's Movement of Life Initiative).  I'm interested in...

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discussion

Seeking Host Organisations for Travel Scholarship Application

Eva Neill

19 December 2023 12:54am

Hi all,I'm Eva, a final year undergraduate studying Joint Honours Biology and Geography at the University of St Andrews.  I've recently joined the WildLabs community in...

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Herdhanu Jayanto

20 December 2023 3:07am

Hi Eva, 

Me and my colleagues run a small NGO based on Yogyakarta in Indonesia, although our projects are spread around the country. One of our active project is working with the movement ecology of Sunda gharials in Berbak-Sembilang National Park. One of the other is for Malayan Giant Turtle conservation using one-plan approach, which we are planning to start in situ phase. We can't give you promise about anything, but are able to be the host organization and would love to talk the opportunity!

Cheers,

Dhanu

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discussion

Which market-available microphones, accelerometers and GIS sensors for dogs / pets ?

Luigi

7 September 2023 3:21pm

I have conducted an MSc thesis in data-science applied on bioacoustics data, and wish to carry on some experiments on my own now, using domestic environment as a lab.I am looking...

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Luigi

6 December 2023 2:03pm

good to know that GPS coordinates can be used to sync the time. 
Does GPS resolution allow to a desired time resolution (e.g. seconds) ? Does choice of time resolution significantly depends on the physiology of the animal (e.g. time of re-action to stimuli, hence less than a second) or for most animal communication and animal behaviour is it enough above a second? 
 

Paul Bunker

17 December 2023 3:02pm

I am not an acoustics person but train and deploy canines in the field. Are you looking for something that records  sniff rate and patterns?  For GPS I just use a Garmin collar system Altha 100. There is a Conservation Canine group that might be worth asking your question in. 

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discussion

TWS2023 - get in touch

Tobias Petri

5 November 2023 8:13pm

Hi, I'll stick around at the TWS2023 Louisville with our friends from e-obs to do some live Firetail demos and discuss your ideas and requirements. Would be great to get in...

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Tobias Petri

5 November 2023 9:04pm

I'm registered with the TWS2023 app, so feel free to nudge me there as well

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article

Restoring the Mara Elephant Population Using Coexistence Tech Solutions with Mara Elephant Project's Wilson Sairowua

Esther Githinji

20 October 2023 1:31pm

Listen in on our interview with Mara Elephant Project’s Tracking Manager, Wilson Sairowua, as he explains how MEP is using software, geofencing and drone technologies to resolve human-elephant conflict across Maasai...

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Frank van der Most

27 May 2024 3:54pm

Super interesting interview! I especially liked the last minutes where Wilson Sairowua explains about the experimental farm to see which crops elephants like and dislike. Just...
Esther Githinji

28 May 2024 8:12am

Great suggestion @Frank_van_der_Most ! It's really interesting to see conservation tech interacting with other forms of environmental tech. There is definitely room for effective...
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