Biodiversity

This page is about the intersection of ecosystems and machine learning in the context of climate change adaptation. For an overview of biodiversity monitoring as a whole, please see the Wikipedia page on this topic.

Changes in climate are increasingly affecting the distribution and composition of ecosystems. This has profound implications for global biodiversity, as well as agriculture, disease, and natural resources such as wood and fish. Machine learning can help by supporting efforts to monitor ecosystems and biodiversity.

Machine Learning Application AreasEdit

Species identification: Machine learning tools are increasingly being used to help in the identification of organisms, both from photographic documentation and (in cases such as birds) audio recordings. These tools are deployed in personal apps and as part of citizen science projects, as well as within formal scientific monitoring efforts.
Ecosystem monitoring: Understanding the overall state of an ecosystem can be valuable both in preserving biodiversity and in maintaining ecosystem services such as food, wood, pollination, and carbon sequestration. Machine learning has the potential to scale and democratize ecosystem monitoring.
Biodiversity data analysis: There is an increasing wealth of data available on biodiversity, species distributions, and ecosystem health (including some data gathered using ML approaches). Machine learning can be useful in working with this data and analyzing trends.

Background ReadingsEdit

PrimersEdit

"AI empowers conservation biology" (2019)^[1]: A high-level overview of this problem space. Available here.
"Climate, biodiversity, and land: using ML to protect and restore ecosystems" (2020)^[2]: An overview talk, with pointers to practical starting points. Available here.

TextbooksEdit

"Artificial Intelligence and Conservation" (2019)^[3]: A curated collection of case studies. Book description here.

OtherEdit

Natural Solutions Toolkit^[4]: Example in-the-field implementations. Available here.

Online Courses and Course MaterialsEdit

🌎 This section is currently a stub. You can help by adding resources, as well as 1-2 sentences of context for each resource.

Conferences, Journals, and Professional OrganizationsEdit

Journals and conferencesEdit

PLOS Collections: A collection featuring work on the ecological impacts of climate change, available here.

Societies and organizationsEdit

Past and upcoming eventsEdit

Libraries and ToolsEdit

DataEdit

ReferencesEdit

↑ Kwok, Roberta (2019-03-04). "AI empowers conservation biology". Nature. 567: 133–134. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-00746-1.
↑ Morris, Dan (2020-04-26). "Climate, Biodiversity, and land: Using ML to protect and restore ecosystems". SlidesLive. Retrieved 2020-09-24.
↑ Fang, Fei; Tambe, Milind; Dilkina, Bistra; Plumptre, Andrew J., eds. (2019-02-28). Artificial Intelligence and Conservation (1 ed.). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108587792. ISBN 978-1-108-58779-2.CS1 maint: date and year (link)
↑ "AI for Conservation | Coastal Resilience". Retrieved 2020-09-24.

[1] Kwok, Roberta (2019-03-04). "AI empowers conservation biology". Nature. 567: 133–134. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-00746-1.

[2] Morris, Dan (2020-04-26). "Climate, Biodiversity, and land: Using ML to protect and restore ecosystems". SlidesLive. Retrieved 2020-09-24.

[3] Fang, Fei; Tambe, Milind; Dilkina, Bistra; Plumptre, Andrew J., eds. (2019-02-28). Artificial Intelligence and Conservation (1 ed.). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108587792. ISBN 978-1-108-58779-2.CS1 maint: date and year (link)

[4] "AI for Conservation | Coastal Resilience". Retrieved 2020-09-24.

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