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Technology for Nature?

By Claire Asher, on 16 June 2014

Many of our greatest technological advances have tended to mark disaster for nature. Cars guzzle fossil fuels and contribute to global warming; industrialised farming practices cause habitat loss and pollution; computers and mobile phones require harmful mining procedures to harvest rare metals. But increasingly, ecologists and conservation biologists are asking whether we can use technology to help nature. On 10th June 2014, UCL’s Center for Biodiversity and Environment Research (CBER) hosted academics from the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, the Zoological Society of London and the Natural History Museum, London for a workshop on “Technology for Nature”. The workshop formed part of a series of public debates and workshops organised in collaboration with the French Embassy, around the theme of the ‘State of Nature’.

Technology for Nature Workshop

The workshop discussed some of the latest technologies available to monitor biodiversity and how these might be harnessed in combination with citizen science to better understand the natural world around us. Citizen science, which engages members of the public in collecting and processing data about nature, is a powerful tool enabling scientists to collect much larger quantities of data on populations of key species. Citizen science projects not only provide biologists with vastly more data than they could ever hope to collect on their own, but it also serves to engage members of the public with the natural world, and raise awareness of key environmental issues.

Following the workshop, UCL also hosted an evening debate in collaboration with colleagues at the French Embassy, London. Professor Romain Julliard from the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, and Professor Kate Jones from UCL’s CBER discussed how new technologies can be used to understand and predict the impact of humans on the natural world, and whether these technologies can be used to inspire and engage the public with the environment around them.

Technology for Nature Debate

Professor Julliard is the Scientific Director of Vigie Nature, a project to monitor trends in various widespread species including butterflies, birds, bees and flowers, using citizen scientists in France. Professor Jones holds the chair of Ecology and Biodiversity at UCL and the Zoological Society of London, and has been involved in a number of projects utilising citizen scientists to monitor populations of bats both in the UK and across Europe. She started the iBats project, which uses volunteers to collect acoustic recordings of bat calls which a computer algorithm can then use to identify the species, and has used citizen science to process data from this project through Bat Detective.

The meeting last week brought together academics from a range of different institutions with a shared interest in monitoring biodiversity to better understand how humans are impacting upon it. We hope this will lead to new projects and collaborations to monitor biodiversity and gain vital data that is needed to assess and ultimately mitigate our impact on the animals and plants we share the planet with.

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