Imagine you’re leading an expedition in the depths of a forest. You discover a species of frog that piques your interest. Conventional rules of taxonomy dictate that you capture the…
Rubber cultivation in Southeast Asia is responsible for double or even triple the deforestation previously attributed to it, according to a recently published study. Antje Ahrends, one of the study’s…
Wildlife conservation actions tend to be focused in specific locations because the data that inform them also tend to be highly localized. But what if we could visualize where a…
How do you bridge the gap between ecology and the economy? It’s this question that guided both Kevin Webb and Tom Quigley, albeit from different perspectives. Webb, a venture capitalist,…
The next time you see a leaf gliding down from above, you might want to take a closer look. For all you know, what’s tumbling down could possibly be a…
Conservation technology has witnessed an unprecedented boom in recent years. Drones are soaring higher than ever before. DNA sampled from soil, air and water are revolutionizing biodiversity surveys. Artificial intelligence…
The Airbus Foundation and the Connected Conservation Foundation have announced the second edition of their “Satellites for Biodiversity Award.” Aiming to encourage the use of high-resolution satellite imagery for biodiversity…
When they embarked upon an experiment to swab leaves at Kibale National Park in Uganda in June 2022, Christina Lynggaard, Jan Gogarten and Patrick Omeja had little to no expectations.…
Scientists have long known that global warming is upending not just seasonal climate trends, but also minute weather patterns on a daily basis. However, establishing a strong link hasn’t always…
A swanky iPhone or a sleek new iPad might sound like a perfect holiday gift for many. Tom Radzio feels the same joy when he retrieves an iButton and downloads…
Andres Peña Castro and his team didn’t set out to track sea ice. Their original plan was to quantify the interactions between ocean, earth and atmosphere to be able to…
Growing up, Adam Dixon couldn't swim or fish in the Arkansas River which flowed through his town of Derby in Kansas. Agricultural runoff, along with industrial activities, heavily impacted the…
About 100 years ago, a predator control program at Yellowstone National Park drove the wolves native to the region extinct. That kicked off the gradual deterioration of the entire ecosystem.…
SINGAPORE — If you didn’t know better, you might think Edwin Beng is heading home after buying a new appliance. It’s a muggy Sunday morning in Singapore, and Beng, carrying…
Stephanie Fennessy and her husband have been tagging giraffes in Africa since the early 2000s. The couple initially started out by using modified elephant collars. They later switched to using…
From getting alerts about injured elephants to tracking ones that are straying too close to villages, the Mara Elephant Project has used the EarthRanger platform since 2019 to manage the…
Justin Stewart left for Mount Chimborazo in August 2022 to collect fungal samples from the Ecuadoran volcano at an elevation of 4,000 meters, or about 13,000 feet. Given that vegetation…
SINGAPORE — For a while now, researchers and policy experts have touted the transition to a circular economy as a way to sustainably handle the world’s growing waste and pollution…
Debbie Saunders’s quest to make wildlife tracking more efficient started in the early 2000s. The wild ecologist was studying swift parrots (Lathamus discolor) in Australia and found it challenging to…
It was supposed to be a night like any other. Luis Crespo and his team would walk the beach of Maunabo, Puerto Rico, looking for leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea).…
SINGAPORE — A huge drone hums and hovers above the canopy of a tree. Just as one might start to think that the show is over, the action begins. Slowly,…
It seems a cache of biodiversity data was hiding in plain sight all along. In the midst of hazardous particulate matter trapped in the filters of two air quality monitoring…
SINGAPORE — Macaques look on from trees as a round of applause breaks out. After repeated attempts, a team has managed to fly a drone and drop a sensor platform…
When Hurricane Dorian blazed its trail of destruction through the Bahamas in 2019, it ravaged the country’s mangroves. Almost overnight, coastal communities were deprived of a natural barrier that protected…
SINGAPORE — It’s been a hectic few weeks for Kevin Marriott. On a humid May morning in Singapore, he shuttles between two locations at the city’s Windsor Nature Park. At…
Imagine a burned forest in California. The charred remains of trees, the soot on the forest floor and the smoke in the air might make it seem like all is…
Elon Musk may claim to hate them, but can Twitter bots be put to good use? A new tool that aims to monitor and expose deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest…
For scientists and ecologists studying wildlife, listening to the sounds of nature is all the rage now. And with good reason. The exponential growth in the use of audio to…
Ask Andrew Farnsworth about the origins of the BirdCast project, and he would describe it as “ancient history.” The year 1999, when the project was conceived, is a far cry…
It was down to the wire for the GEDI mission, but it now seems like the force may have prevailed. In a last-minute decision, NASA has decided to extend the…
Abhishyant is a staff writer with a focus on conservation technology.
