New technologies for monitoring biodiversity

Biodiversity monitoring provides the essential information on which conservation action is based. Consistent, cost-effective implementation of monitoring is a major challenge, but capacity is developing rapidly through innovative use of technology, providing exciting opportunities for better and more affordable information on the state of the world’s wildlife. These technologies are based around the deployment of autonomous sensors to gather information in ways that human observers cannot: at larger scales, over longer periods, and in more inaccessible places, and including satellite, aerial, ground based and underwater applications. While these technologies present new opportunities, they also throw up new challenges and questions. How can we design, smaller, stronger, cheaper, more sensitive and more flexible sensors for biodiversity monitoring? How can we deploy these sensors most effectively? How can we best process and analyse the data they produce to provide useful outputs?

This symposium will give an insight into the state of the art in this area, focusing on satellite and aerial survey techniques, camera trap and related technologies, acoustic recording and the use of technology to facilitate and motivate the participation of citizen scientists in monitoring.