Tag Archives: inaturalist

Data in Colour: Bringing Photos Into Our Spreadsheets

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Image Credit: Shiv’s fotografia, CC BY-SA 4.0, Image Cropped

When I think of the ecological data I typically work with, it usually tells me where plants or animals are, how many of them there are, and how those quantities might change. Most often, these organisms boil down to a few spreadsheet cells. But what if the questions you’re asking are less “where is the organism”, and more “what does it look like”? 

Photographic data is not a new phenomenon for scientists, but thanks to huge leaps in technology (hello, camera phones) it is a booming data source.  Community science – whereby members of the general public submit photos of species they’ve happened across – has seen a huge rise in popularity, thanks to apps and community platforms like iNaturalist. As a result, photo data is constantly growing in abundance, and many studies are quickly adapting to take advantage of this data source.

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Placing a Camera Trap for Beginners in 5 Easy Steps

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Image Credit: Pikrepo, CC0 1.0, Image Cropped

If you haven’t yet heard, April is Citizen Science month, so we’re posting a spate of articles on how people can help out and contribute to science without spending months making tiny adjustments at the whims of peer reviewers! This week Sammy Mason (of the UK’s MammalWeb project) and I have put together a checklist for anyone who wants to organise their own camera trap.

For those not in the know, a camera trap is essentially a camera placed out in the wild which records the movement of local animal species whenever they pass by. It’s a fantastic way to document your local wildlife, and it’s a huge help in collating important data about our wildlife. If you’re not convinced, check out the article below.

Bringing Wild Mammals to the Classroom: The MammalWeb Program

So for those of you who would life to set up a camera trap, let’s get stuck into what you have to consider.

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What Does Citizen Science Mean To You?

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April 2020 is Global Citizen Science Month. (Image credit: Citizen Science Association. CC-BY 4.0, Image Cropped)

What does citizen science mean to you? If you asked fifty people this question, you’d probably get fifty different answers. Citizen science—or, as it is sometimes called, community science—is increasingly common in scientific research, revolutionizing the way that many types of data are collected, but at the same time it can feel distinctly personal to those that participate in it.

Snapping a photo of a backyard tree each day to document the change in seasons … collecting a water quality sample from your neighborhood stream and sending it to a local lab for analysis … swiping through photos of outer space on your smartphone and identifying patterns among formations of stars—the experience of citizen science looks different for each person who participates in it.

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Donald Hobern: Cataloguing the Planet’s DNA

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I spoke with GBIF’s executive secretary and amateur lepidopterist Donald Hobern about how DNA barcoding fits into modern conservation and ecology (Image Credit: Donald Hobern, CC BY-2.0, Image Cropped)

DNA barcoding has revolutionised science. Ask anyone working in evolution or taxonomy these days what the biggest changes are the they’ve seen in their discipline, chances are it’ll be to do with gene sequencing and DNA processing. So when the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) Conference came to Trondheim last week, I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the behind the scenes work that goes into cataloguing the DNA barcodes of life on earth.

I sat down with Donald Hobern, Executive Secretary of iBOL and former Executive Secretary of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Director of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). Donald joined iBOL just as they launched BIOSCAN, a $180 million dollar program which aims to accelerate the cataloguing of the world’s biodiversity in DNA form. We spoke about BIOSCAN, the technology behind bringing occurrence and genetic data together, and how the work iBOL and GBIF do ties into the bigger picture of global conservation and sustainability.

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Citizen Science and Biodiversity: Thoughts From a Meeting With the European Citizen Science Association

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Image Credit: NPS Photo, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped

A collection of biodiversity researchers from across Europe came together in Brussels for a unique kind of meeting last week. We were connected by two common threads: first, we are all supported by BiodivERsA, a large network of European biodiversity research projects funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. And second, most importantly, we are all interested in connecting our biodiversity research with citizen science in one form or another.

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