ALA Webinar: Exploring next-gen biodiversity detection technologies

Access to high-quality biodiversity data is more essential than ever in understanding and responding to changes in our natural environment. This information is used for informing planning, policy and decision-making and delivering research. Through the Atlas of Living Australia, more than 135 million species occurrence records are available as open data, with rich information accompanying these records such as images, location, spatial, genetic and related data.

By enhancing traditional methods to monitor species with novel technologies, a more comprehensive view of Australia’s biodiversity can be developed. To celebrate Biodiversity Month in September, hear from three speakers discuss their use of ecoacoustics, eDNA and camera trapping as innovative methods to enhance our ability to detect and monitor biodiversity in Australia.

This event will be recorded, with the recording made available through ALA channels in the week following the event.

The ALA receives support from the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and is hosted by CSIRO.

For further information, reach out to communications@ala.org.au.

Banner photo credit: Golden Stag Beetle (Lamprima aurata) Photo Credit ryan35mm CC BY NC-4.0

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• Free

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Contact

communications@ala.org.au

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Speakers:

Christine Chivas:

Christine Chivas is a PhD candidate at Macquarie University in the eDNA and biomonitoring lab. Prior to commencing her PhD, Christine has completed a Bachelor of Biodiversity and Conservation, Masters of Conservation Biology and a Masters of Research. Her Masters of Research project helped spark her interest in the field of eDNA, by applying eDNA to understand the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance on Northern Queensland estuaries. Christine’s PhD has allowed her to bring her interests in eDNA and biodiversity conservation together, exploring the novel use of mosquito ingested DNA (iDNA) to monitor terrestrial vertebrates in Kakadu National Park.

Dr Matthew Luskin

Matthew is the Director of the Wildlife Observatory of Australia (WildObs), an ARC Senior Research Fellow and CI of the Ecological Cascades Lab at the University of Queensland. Matthew’s talk will focus on the vision for WildObs, a multi-institutional initiative to mobilise and share biodiversity data collected using cameras. WildObs is supported by ARDC Planet, TERN and ALA, among others, and is open to all contributors and collaborators across Australia. Before coming to Australia in 2019, Matthew's training as a quantitative ecologist at UC Berkeley included using cameras to study Sumatran tigers for his PhD followed by 10 years running wildlife monitoring programs in seven Asian and African countries.

Professor Paul Roe

Paul is a Professor of Computer Science at QUT in Brisbane Australia, and Head of School. Paul is an expert in ecoacoustic monitoring; for the past 12 years his group has been researching how acoustics can be used to scale environmental monitoring. His team have developed novel hardware devices and software tools for collecting and analysing big acoustic data. This has included tools for recognising fauna calls, browsing and analysing whole soundscapes and for high throughput acoustics analysis. Paul leads the Australian Acoustic Observatory: a $1.8M Australian Research Council (ARC) LIEF project comprising more than 400 continuously recording sensors deployed over Australia. He is passionate about open science and also leads the Open Ecoacoustics project, which is developing an open ecoacoustics platform, tools, techniques and protocols to further ecoacoustic monitoring for conservation.

Facilitator: Dr Martin Westgate

Martin Westgate leads the Science and Decision Support team at the Atlas of Living Australia. His research focuses on how scientific information can be used to understand and mitigate human impacts on the environment, via a combination of empirical ecology and evidence synthesis. Martin is also a scientific software developer and occasional frog-watcher.