Written by Dr. Paul Jepson, Course Director, MSc Biodiversity, Conservation & Management, University of Oxford
The roll out of computing as a utility and rapid rise of smartphone ownership opens exciting new possibilities for biological recording. Apps – small task orientated programmes – have the potential to integrate the sensing and computation capacities of smartphones with the power of cloud computing and social networking and the sensing and intellectual capabilities of the human mind and body.
In an article recently published in Ambio (DOI 10.1007/s13280-015-0712-2) we reported the findings of a survey of nature-themed Android apps available on the Google Play Store in the spring of 2013 (5 years after the launch of apps). We were particularly interested to see if this technology was being used to simply extend the reach of existing practices of engaging with nature (super-size) or whether its potential is being harnessed to transform interactions with society and nature. The results were disappointing. Of the 6300 nature-related apps returned most were simply transferring analogue products and practices to mobile digital (e.g. field guides) using simple off the shelf software development kits (SDK).
Most of the 33 biological recording apps returned focused on recording target species (e.g. Great Koala Count), taxon groups (e.g. Bugs Count), invasive species (e.g. Plant tracker) or pathogens (e.g. Leafwatch) and simply combined a basic field guide and survey form with the location and photo capture functionalities of the smart phone. These functionalities are used in more innovative ways by apps such as iSpot and iNaturalist that are integrated with web-platforms that deploy crowd-sourcing to develop identification skills, prestige and community.
Our survey returned 755 recreation support apps (for bird-watching, fungi collecting, hunting and so-forth). Of these, 219 had the ability to log sightings yet only 25 of these had the facility to transfer these records to global biodiversity gateways. Given that the number of these apps is likely to increase there may be an argument for providing and promoting APIs for biodiversity platforms, through for example, extending the scope of initiatives such as www.indicia.org.uk.
A key insight of our survey was that step-changes in apps and biological recording lie at the interface of information engineering, computer science and biology, specifically, the use of machines learning to generate algorithms that augment human capacities. The New Forest Cicada Hunt app illustrates the potential. This app deploys the smartphone microphone to ‘hear’ the lost cicada which stridulates at frequencies above human hearing and sophisticated algorithms to automatically identify this and five other species of Orthoptera. The holy-grail would be an app that identifies bird vocalisations. Bird species identification and hence recording is a specialist skill. Such an app could broaden engagement, enrich people’s every day engagements with landscape and potentially invigorate the nascent science of soundscape ecology. Research is under-way on the development of such an app which faces huge, but surmountable challenges.
Two other lines of thinking that emerged from this study are worth mentioning. One concerns the philosophy of app development for biological recording. The current situation is one of scientists needing information and designing apps to enrol citizens as volunteer data collectors. An alternative is the Google approach which is to put the user first: to design services that people will want and like and then find opportunities to marketize (or in our case scientize) the data generated. Currently this ethos is only really visible in the eBird app, which provides a range of birding support/enrichment functionalities. Its rapid up-take is generating data at a volume and velocity that is leading to innovative conservation policy initiatives such such as ‘pop-up’ reserves. The second line of thinking asks whether biological recording can be extended to the internet using web-clipper apps to capture and systematise the vast amount of biological observational data that people share and post on the web via blogs, tweets and on photo-sharing platforms such as flicker and Instagram. This imagines a future where biological recording is practised in the field and in cyberspace!
In summary, biological recording is a key component of nature conservation as a cultural, scientific and policy imperative. Like it or not we are embarking on an information revolution and it is vital that biological recorders engage with these new technologies in progressive and experimental ways.
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