Event /  11 May 2022

WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Data Analysis in Movement Ecology

Our second meetup in Season 4 explored the latest advancements and emerging developments in data analysis for movement ecology. On Wednesday, May 11, we heard short talks from leading experts Sara Beery, Somayeh Dodge, Christen Fleming, and Mackenzie Mathis, followed by an open discussion and community exchange. 

Online Event
11 May 2022 - this event is in the past.
4:00 pm ~ 5:30 pm Europe/London
 Recording Available

About the Series

This season, we’re bringing together leading engineers, conservationists, and academics to explore the future of technology in movement ecology and ask where exactly investment is needed to catapult this field forward. Join us to discuss emerging tools for movement data collection, analysis, and sharing, and to imagine future tech innovations that could answer questions we haven’t yet thought to ask. 

Fueled by the recent explosion of cheaper, lighter, and more powerful animal‐borne biologging technologies, movement ecology sits at the precipice of major breakthroughs that could revolutionize our understanding of wildlife and the ecosystems they navigate. However, we don’t yet have clear priorities for investment that consider a longer-term horizon for innovation and impact. 



To address this gap, we are proud to introduce Tracking Progress, a new WILDLABS research project supported by the Moore Foundation’s Science Program and an advisory committee of movement ecology experts. In this project, we aim to harness the collective expertise of the WILDLABS community through facilitated virtual meetups and focus group discussions to conduct the first global horizon scan of tech in movement ecology.

We know that when we create spaces for our passionate and innovative community to collectively define priorities, the resulting discussions lead to big steps forward for all of us. By joining us at Virtual Meetups this season, your ideas and questions will do more than just drive the conversations you’ve come to know and love - they’ll be actively laying the foundation for a research project that can have real significance to the future directions and investments in this field. We hope to see you there!

Virtual Meetup Season 4 Event 2 Poster

Meetup 2: Data Analysis in Movement Ecology

Date & Time

Wednesday, May 11, 2022

4:00-5:30pm BST / 11:00am-12:30pm EDT

Recordings of the individual talks, open discussion, and full meetup are available on the event page.

About the Session

As discussed in our first event about Data Collection, advancements in technologies for collecting and transmitting biologging data are opening up paradigm-shifting opportunities for ecological research and management. However, these advancements have brought with them typical big-data challenges, including computational load, intensive data management and processing, and difficult statistical analyses, which require innovative and collaborative approaches to overcome (Nathan et al. 2022).

In this event, we are bringing together leading experts in the realms of AI for conservation, computational movement analytics, big data analysis, and even neuroscience to discuss the latest advances and what’s on the horizon in movement data analysis. Some of the key topics to be discussed include analysis workflows and methodological considerations, overcoming the challenges associated with the spatiotemporal mismatch in data sources, and improving the integration and synthesis of existing analysis solutions.

Agenda

  • Welcome and introductions
  • Sara Beery, NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Caltech
  • Somayeh Dodge, Assistant Professor of Spatial Data Science at UC Santa Barbara
  • Christen Fleming, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
  • Mackenzie Mathis, Bertarelli Foundation Chair of Integrative Neuroscience; Assistant Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne
  • Open discussion and community exchange
  • Takeaways and wrap up

Full session recording

We also have the recording available here on Zoom if you'd like to view the chat. 

Learn more about upcoming Meetups

Visit our Tracking Progress season overview to learn more about the WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Series and other events.

Virtual Meetup Season 4 Poster


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