Developing data management and analytical tools to integrate and advance professional and citizen science camera-trapping initiatives across Europe
Call
Duration
01/03/2024 – 28/02/2027
Total grant
Approx. 2,3 mil. €
More information
John D.C. LINNELL
john.linnell@inn.no
Partners of the project
- Department of Forestry and Wildlife Management, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Koppang, Norway
- NINA Lillehammer, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Lillehammer, Norway
- Department for National Park Monitoring, Bavarian Forest National Park, Grafenau, Germany
- Department of Wildlife Management and Invasive Species, Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Brussels, Belgium
- Centre for Functional Ecology and Evolution, CNRS Campus, Montpellier, France
- Animal Ecology Unit, Research and Innovation Centre, Edmund Mach Foundation, Trentino, Italy
- Institute for Complex Systems – Florence Section, National Research Council of Italy, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
- Department of Public Law and Governance, Tilburg Law School, Partners of the project Tilburg, Netherlands
- Population Ecology Research Unit, Mammal Research Institute, Bialowieza, Poland
- Department of Biology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
- Institute for Game and Wildlife Research, University of Castilla-LaMancha, Ciudad Real, Spain
- Department of Wildlife, Fish and Duration Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden
- Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technology, University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia
- Faculty of Environmental Protection, Velenje, Slovenia
- Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Department of Migration, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Radolfzell, Germany
- Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands
Context
Europe’s wildlife is undergoing dramatic changes. Successful conservation efforts during the 20th century have led to dramatic recoveries of many large mammal species, such as wolf, lynx, red deer, and roe deer across the continent. Some species, like the golden jackal, have also expanded dramatically to occupy new areas. However, the continent on which these species are recovering and expanding is very different from the historic and prehistoric landscapes of the past. Europe is now a human-dominated landscape, with high human densities, massive habitat modification and many potential conflicts between recovering wildlife and the activities and interests of people. In addition, climate change, land-use change, changes in human values and invasive species represent drivers of an ever-changing environment. The result is that there is often a need for constant adaptive management of wildlife species and populations, which requires access to up-to-date, accurate and robust data on their distributions and trends.
Main objectives
The main objective of the BIG_PICTURE project is to bring together the enormous amount of species data that is collected by the thousands of wildlife camera traps (automatic cameras) distributed across Europe by professional researchers, citizen scientists and other private individuals. By developing the appropriate electronic infrastructure (databases and artificial intelligence-driven image processing capability) and statistical tools for data analysis, the BIG_PICTURE project will facilitate the sharing, integration and joint analysis of data collected by many different institutions, allowing continental-scale assessments of species’ status.
Main activities
BIG_PICTURE will have 5 main areas of activity.
- We will examine the legal and institutional issues that enable or constrain data
sharing. - We will build procedures to connect different databases and develop robust
AI-enabled image processing tools. - We will develop best practice procedures for different statistical analysis tools
that can be best applied to different types of data. - Using the results of the previous parts, we will conduct some demonstration analyses to show the added value of data sharing.
- Finally, we will ensure the dissemination of the project’s tools, focusing on a diversity of end users, including wildlife / nature managers at regional, national, and European levels, hunters, foresters, naturalists and scientists, as well as the general public.
The expected impacts of the project include (a) motivating data sharing, by creating easy to use and efficient mechanisms and demonstrating the value of doing so, (b) enhancing our knowledge of wildlife status and ecology across Europe, (c) provide guidance for management and conservation activities, and d) increasing public awareness of the spectacular recovery of our continent’s wildlife and of the challenges represented by “living with success” in conservation.
