Over the past several years, Gaia Resources has grown its team considerably due to an increase in demand for our services. However, there are still plenty of occasions where we acknowledge that a specific project or undertaking requires additional resources or skills, beyond what our own team delivers. Sometimes this is in an opportunity to move into an entirely new area (when we partnered with the Global Wetlands project for a fish identification solution using AI), or in delivery of a specialised solution that we want to ensure we bring all of the best knowledge and skills to the area (such as the consortium of organisations we have brought together for the delivery of the Queensland State Archives Digital Preservation project.)

Sometimes it is because our values align so well with a partner it is almost like considering them an extension of the team.

This is the case with our partners in the digital experience agency, Liquid Interactive. We have worked so well with them, and so often that we will not only consider them for projects that we know will utilise their skills and specialisations, our own team is excited for each opportunity to work alongside them.

We have worked with them as sub-contractors to deliver development support for Drupal websites in GovCMS; they have assisted us on projects where providing data delivery with a great user experience was key; when one of our team members relocated to a city without any other Gaia Resources staff, we set up her office to be colocated with Liquid Interactive team members. I have also been fairly regularly featuring their Future Led Series of events in my own blogs, and while the events themselves have been a fantastic opportunity to hear informed and varied opinions on topics that matter to our future – I also have to confess to enjoying an opportunity to get to know their team a little better.

Liquid Interactive themselves was first introduced to us through one of our previous employees, Morgan Strong, who has engaged them successfully in previous roles. Morgan has moved on to a role as the Digital Transformation Manager at Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), but is also still heavily involved in our organisation as a Drupal and Open Source advocate, and as a client in delivering Collection-based projects.

The world is ever-changing, but I believe there are some things that remain the same. One of these is that as much as what we deliver is important, how we do it is also impactful. It is through our connections with other people that we come to understand the world, so building positive connections can only help us to find our place to deliver the most to our community.

If you are interested in working with an organisation that is collaborative, people-focused, and provides a supportive culture for teamwork, reach out to us via email at info@gaiaresouces.com.au or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Sophie

The post Partnerships, people and change appeared first on Gaia Resources.

There was a fine range of symposia and discussion sessions to choose from. These annual conferences serve two purposes:

• to provide a forum for developing, refining, and extending standards in response to new challenges and opportunities; and
• to provide a showcase for biodiversity informatics – much of which relies on the standards created by TDWG and other organizations.

Data standards that describe and support the exchange of biodiversity information are critical scientific infrastructure. They enable data to be integrated in support of research, decision-making and conservation planning. Ultimately, standards extend the usability of data across taxa, scientific disciplines, and administrative boundaries.

Gaia Resources now has a long history of actively participating in TDWG. Having attended my first conference in Reading, UK in 1998, I became the Oceania representative from 2002-2008, and in the year I took my leave from that position Gaia Resources played a major role in helping host the conference in Fremantle, WA.

This year a small team here prepared an interesting case study for presentation in the conference session entitled “Avenues into integration: communicating taxonomic intelligence from sender to recipient”, organised by researchers from Arizona State University. Serge, Kehan, Jason and I worked on exploring ways of validating taxonomic names data embedded within environmental impact assessments and survey reports. This was spurred by two initiatives:

• the availability of a new and improved taxonomic names interrogator – GNfinder, that significantly improves the speed of finding and retrieving taxonomic name strings from a document with references to the Global Names Index, and
• the availability of IBSA – an open repository of environmental surveys in Western Australia.

The result was a small prototype we called ‘Species Informer’.

We created a procedure for uploading PDF documents, analysing taxonomic names, and then interrogating the Atlas of Living Australia for ancillary data for those names, such as local conservation status, in order to provide an automated summary of taxon names issues within each document for further analysis. We also ran a small test on image-only data using AWS Textract, to extract text from documents scanned as images to use as well.

Preliminary findings, from a small sample, included:

• gnfinder speeds the process of finding taxon names uttered in a document
• of course, it finds all taxon name mentions, not just the relevant ones for the survey
• we didn’t explore the gnfinder options for sensitivity, data source or context searching
• Species Informer produces a CSV report in c. 1 minute, as opposed to perhaps 8 hours for manual verification
• at a c. 90% success rate for finding taxon names in a report, environment officers still need to check the whole document
• not currently included in the Global Names Index are ‘phrase name taxa’ – c. 7% (1,143 of the 15,558) of the native vascular plant taxa in WA, and c. 15% (558 of the 3,782) of conservation taxa.

Some primary conclusions from this study included that ‘data governance’ is required at all parts of the process:

• preparing the source report to ensure all taxa are resolved
• the taxon names available to the Global Names Index could be expanded to include authenticated unpublished (phrase) names
• the regular maintenance of name currency, conservation status and child taxon information is necessary
  conservation status needs to be better maintained at regional, national, global levels.

The video of is now available so you can hear the presentation and see the detailed results of our study. In fact, I would commend all presentations for viewing as many innovative methods for communicating taxonomic intelligence from sender to recipient were presented.

If you’d like to know more about this project, please drop me a line at alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au, or connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Alex

The post TDWG 2020 Conference – avenues into integration appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Funded by the Gordon Reid Foundation for Conservation (Lotterywest) and published jointly by The Wildflower Society of Western Australia (Inc.), Western Australian Herbarium (DBCA) and Kings Park and Botanic Garden, this book took seven years to complete.

Effectively a third edition of John Beard’s ‘Descriptive Catalogue’, this project aimed to score a standardised set of descriptive data for every vascular plant species then known to occur in the State – some 11,922 taxa in all.

By adopting TDWG’s Description Language for Taxonomy (DELTA) standard the project was able to flexibly produce both the printed content for the book and a simple interactive identification method within FloraBase.

It is worth noting that WA and Queensland, due to their mega-diversity and very active species discovery, have yet to produce complete State Floras, and while not a Flora in the strict sense, this work was the first time a full conspectus and identification tool for the WA’s vascular flora had been achieved.

Many hands worked on realising this work. Greg Keighery for nurturing the project after Dr Beard, the members of the Steering Committee – Dr Neville Marchant (Director, WA Herbarium), Dr Steve Hopper and Roger Fryer (Kings Park) and successive presidents of the Wildflower Society — Marion Blackwell, Tom Alford, John Robertson, Anne Holmes and Brian Moyle.

Tom Alford was invaluable throughout in the role of project chairperson, championing the data-based approach to information gathering, and tirelessly seeking funds to complete the project. Three wonderful people conscientiously gathered and codified the data from the Herbarium’s Census and Specimen datasets — Grazyna Paczkowska, Helen Coleman and Amanda Spooner, the latter who saw the book through publication and maintained the descriptive dataset for a further 8 years. And I cannot go without mentioning colleagues Nicholas Lander, Terry Macfarlane, Ben Richardson, Mike Choo and the sorely missed Paul Gioia, who all supported this innovative project.

The coded data from the publication was the last major piece of the FloraBase project to fit in place, integrating with the Names and Specimen data, images and maps and providing the first simple Statewide interactive key to the Western Australian flora. Twenty years later the available data is still working away, but there are now twelve years of data updates to be made. Time to get this project back on the rails with a further funding round!

You can read much more about this project in the book’s Introduction, available here: https://florabase.dpaw.wa.gov.au/publications/descat/.

As always, if you’d like to know more about this area, then please drop me a line at alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au, or connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Alex

The post Twenty Years of Descriptive Data appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Twenty World Heritage Areas are recognised in Australia by UNESCO for their unique cultural, geographical, and biological diversity. While these areas support outstanding universal values, they are under risk from disease, invasive species, and declining ecosystem processes. The speakers and panellists, drawn from the scientific community and on-the-ground conservation practitioners, discussed the benefits and challenges of integrating climate change and biodiversity knowledge in developing adaptive management plans to build more resilience in both species and ecosystems. They also clearly identified that existing ecological pressures are being exacerbated by a rapidly changing climate.

There were two featured speakers and five panellists discussing these pressing conservation issues – you can read more about each of them here.

Melinda Laidlaw, a Senior Ecologist with the Queensland Herbarium, gave a fascinating talk on a number of the decision tools employed for modelling past, current and future species habitats and investigating the impacts of climate change on the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area.

Density of terrestrial threatened flora habitat across Queensland pre-clearing	Density of terrestrial threatened flora habitat remaining as remnant vegetation in 2015
Source: State of the Environment – Queensland Department of Environment and Science.

 
Dave Newell, a Senior Lecturer at Southern Cross University, spoke passionately about his work on understanding the ecology of endangered amphibians, most of which are narrow range endemics susceptible to climate change and disease impacts. Dave and his students’ work in the World Heritage rainforests of northern NSW over several decades has improved conservation outcomes for some of Australia’s most unique frogs.

Dave Newell – illustrating in more detail the process for modelling potential rainforest frog distributions

In response to audience questions, the panellists also discussed other threatening processes like extreme bushfire events and invasive diseases such as Myrtle Rust, the importance of new research into understanding the importance of ‘cloud water’ as a key survival strategy for some montane species, and the necessity of on-the-ground community coordination of conservation efforts.

I will add a link to the full webinar recording when it becomes available, or you will find it here in coming days.

The next webinar in this series is ‘Carbon sequestration & biodiversity: valuing & managing carbon-rich systems‘, scheduled for Tue, 13 October 2020 – I commend this series to you.

Species habitat modelling is an area I’ve long been interested in (I was a fairly early user of BIOCLIM in my work at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, too many years ago) and more recently wrote on the utility of using the Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory (BCCVL).

Gaia Resources has worked with another NESP Hub – Clean Air Urban Landscapes – in recent years to build their Urban Wildlife mobile app. If you’d like to know more about how Gaia Resources could work with you in this area, then please drop me a line at alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au, or connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Alex

The post Evidence-based planning for resilient World Heritage Areas appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The recent WADSIH/Halliburton Data Science Bootcamp was the first virtual training event I’ve ever attended. For one week, Dr Satyam Priyadarshy and his team of scientists were guiding us through the world of data science, machine learning, the use of neural networks, and artificial intelligence. The unusual factor was that they were doing so from different parts of India.

On the first day of training, Dr Priyadarshy quoted the ancient parable of the Blind Men and an Elephant to help us understand fundamental data science and machine learning concepts.

So, how do we make sense from the sheer volume of data that is collected nowadays? What are the best ways? It can be very hard to see the big picture when one is overwhelmed by data coming just from one strategy or process in an organisation.

That’s where data science algorithms and tools come in – to find patterns and reveal how seemingly separate processes influence each other. Machine learning allows us to look at multiple variables and predict behaviours.

In this workshop we used Jupyter Notebook, accessible through Anaconda – a scalable data science platform. Because it is browser-based, I could verify each line of python code straight away. I was quite surprised how easy it was to remember syntax and to grasp the content of each learning module. Soon I was looking forward to each of the three-hour coding sessions.

We used python modules to predict trends and derive patterns from seismic data. Neural networks and machine learning algorithms were explained, demystified and illustrated through experience. And to my surprise it was fun! I look forward to implementing this new knowledge in future Gaia projects.

If you’d like to know more, feel free to reach out and see what Gaia Resources can do for you in this rapidly developing space. Comment below, contact me at barbara.zakrzewska@gaiaresources.com.au, or start a chat via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Data Science Upskilling Bootcamp appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Discovering Biodiversity: A decadal plan for taxonomy and biosystematics in Australia and New Zealand 2018–2027

discover and document all remaining Australian species of plants, animals, fungi and other organisms … in a generation.

The Decadal Plan for Taxonomy and Biosystematics in Australia and New Zealand (2018–2027) recommended 22 strategic actions grouped under six key initiatives. Together, these provide a vision for the future that would see a substantial acceleration in the discovery and documentation of the Australasia’s biodiversity.

​​Taxonomy Australia is developing more detailed implementation plans for each of these strategic actions, in consultation with the taxonomy and biosystematics sector and with key stakeholders, of which this forum was a part.

The video introduction runs you through the the scope and intent of the national workshop, and these wrap-up videos outline the results of the ten ambitious roundtable discussion groups.

In the first stage of synthesis from these roundtables deliberations a list of action items was distilled:

• build a collaboration space that combines an expertise directory (online register of taxonomists), a portal for shared field work, and a clearing-house mechanism to connect citizen scientists and scientists for taxonomic projects and a coordinated recognition system for citizen science contributions to taxonomy,
• streamline the permitting process in every state to reduce the burden on collectors applying for permits,
• start writing shorter, faster morphological descriptions,
• agree on a controlled name-space for informal species (Operational Taxonomic Units),
• create a new specialised journal for rapid taxonomic description and publication,
• reach community consensus on how to integrate molecular and morphological data, especially when they conflict,
• measure the economic value of our collections (independently from their replacement cost),
• design collections now for years 5, 10 and 25 years of our mission, and
• start including funding for collections activities in grant applications.

These actions are promising and we commend the efforts of Taxonomy Australia. Taxonomy, the science of naming and classifying, is a global practice; species are not confined by regional boundaries and so taxonomists work to describe new species in their family of expertise, wherever they are found. Therefore, coordination at a national level to discern and describe new taxa benefits all the component states.

Much of this nationally-coordinated taxonomic effort will streamline the work of Western Australia’s recently announced Biodiversity Information Office (BIO)​ not least because, in such a biodiverse State, there remain so many species yet to be discovered, described, and their conservation status assessed.

The transformation pathway to digital assessment at a bioregional scale (courtesy WABSI)

WABSI also led the establishment of the Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessments (IBSA), launched in May 2018, in conjunction with the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, as a publicly accessible repository that captures and consolidates data from more than 500 biodiversity surveys each year.  Again, Gaia Resources has been involved – our work on streamlining the lodgement of assessments within the Environmental Impact Assessment project has also been launched.

And in late 2019, the Prime Minister announced progress towards a nationally consistent digital environmental assessment and approvals regime, in partnership with Western Australia. You can read more on this in the Digitally Transforming Environmental Assessment report.

Through the development of these projects, as well as shared data repositories and the establishment of the WA’s ‘Environment Online’ digital portal, the State is rapidly developing a comprehensive framework for biodiversity assessment. Taxon names, to return to the start, are the fundamental key to integrating, maintaining and reliably using these amassed datasets. In fact, they drive the whole ‘data ecosystem’.

If you’d like to discuss any of the topics covered in this post, please drop me a line at alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au, or connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Alex

The post Current biodiversity initiatives in Australia appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Alex recently compiled a list of references from the publications record of four of our SMEs, and it makes for interesting reading! From Mieke’s papers describing new fish parasites and subterranean pseudoscorpions, to Meg’s TED-x presentations on digital preservation in music archives. From Kehan’s taxonomic work compiling codified morphological descriptions of the grasses of the world, to Alex’s book cataloguing all of Western Australia’s vascular flora.

Blind centipedes of the genus Cormocephalus from subterranean habitats in WA see all …	Saving digital knowledge from technology obsolescence. TEDxPerth see all …
Grass Base—The online world grass flora. RBG Kew see all …	The Western Australian Flora: a descriptive catalogue see all …

Such a wealth of expertise and experience, particularly in the Archives and Collections domains, makes our enterprise robust, agile and responsive. We hope to add more staff publications regularly so that, along with our Blog and Project posts, you can see the depth of expertise across our organisation.

If you’d like to know more about Gaia Resources specialist skill sets, then please feel free leave a comment below, connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

The post Our Subject Matter Experts appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Yet, it has traditionally been the scientific paper that takes precedence as the vector for knowledge, with its core data relegated to a few tables locked into print format. The bulk of the collected data is left in lab books, spreadsheets and analysis software formats in the scientist’s office, or at best as supplementary digital data tables on the journal’s website.

What happens at the two ends of a scientific project can be the most critical. Once a ‘research question’ has been proposed, defining what data must be collected and the methods that ensure rigour and accuracy of recording data become paramount. Poor project design can kill a project. Likewise, once ‘the paper’ is out, where does the data go?

Data capture is increasingly being aided by automation, such as sensors that measure one parameter accurately, repeatedly and automatically submitting the data points to the scientist digitally. Smartphone apps are now commonly used to improve the accuracy of observations by providing their users with accurate automated data on geo-location and date/time, as well as controlled vocabularies for each form field.

Submitted data is then stored in a project data repository where administrators can vet, validate, curate and download data for further analysis. While the project is active the data is maintained; but, once the paper is out and the research funds dry up? In the figure above, the ideal ‘life cycle’ is illustrated.

Nature Science Data provides a best practice model for projects that result in a scientific publication. It mandates the release of datasets with accompanying Data Descriptors, instructs authors to submit datasets to an appropriate public data repository, and maintains a list of vetted data repositories.

To make the data maximally retrievable and reusable, (globally) agreed data standards are crucial. One example from the biological realm is the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), a non-profit scientific community dedicated to developing biodiversity data standards.

In my neck of the science woods, herbarium and museum collections provide an excellent long-term store of absolutely raw data, in the form of a preserved specimen from which multiple researchers over time can extract useful data. With the digitisation revolution in recent decades this fundamental biodiversity has been captured and liberated through institutional websites (eg. FloraBase – the Western Australian Flora) and federated to provide national (Atlas of Living Australia) and global (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) data portals.

For example, as part of UWA’s honey bee project I scored phenological data for a eucalypt species complex using Access to Biological Collection Data (ABCD) standard fields. This data was appended to metadata in the WA Herbarium’s specimen database to become available to researchers around the world.

So, a clearly conceived Data Management Plan should be essential for any scientific research and Citizen Science projects are no different. However, CS projects commonly have a very low funding base, run for just a relatively short period and may be related to a single researcher’s project for which the outcome is a thesis or paper. If a project ends and the digital datasets are not adequately archived in a useable format in a major searchable repository then that hard-won data cannot be maximally discoverable and re-usable.

A good fall-back in this situation would be to at least lodge the data and metadata in the Australian National Data Service (ANDS). ANDS aims to make Australia’s research data assets more valuable for researchers, research institutions and the nation. The site contains many guides to standards, methods and contribution – and is well-worth referring to when considering your next research project.

If you’d like to know more about how we can help you with developing a citizen science program, please leave a comment below, connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

Alex

The post The Data Challenge for (Citizen) Science appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The key reference binding these two events was the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals at the core of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals

NatureLink Perth is a relatively new initiative hosted by Murdoch Unversity that aims to provide a hub for collaboration between diverse stakeholders to integrate nature into our city, sustain our world-class biodiversity, and provide a healthy, liveable city that benefits the economy, environment and its people.

The NatureLink Perth Symposium 2019 was held on the 4 July in the Kim Beazley Lecture Theatre at Murdoch University. The Symposium provided collaborative space to discuss efforts to enable nature-sensitive urban design and nurture a biodiverse, liveable city. It was attended by a diverse set of stakeholders, with some 202 registered participants including 83 organisations, and provided many opportunities for networking and input on the key goals and challenges.

Direct engagement and input from attendees using an interactive presentation platform was an excellent and efficient method for immediately capturing audience responses and feedback for later reference and sharing. Five key issues were presented and formed the basis of the panel discussions at the core of the day (each with a lead panelist).

Planning: How can State and Local Governments work together to better integrate biodiversity and green-space into planning at all levels? (Renata Zelinova, WALGA) Fire Management: What are the conflicting elements of bushfire management and biodiversity conservation? How can we balance them to benefit both? (Tim McNaught, DFES) Community Awareness: What facilities, education and community engagement programs should we target to better connect people with nature and sustain biodiversity? (Carmen Lawrence, CCWA/UWA) Design Implementation: What are the challenges in getting approval for nature sensitive urban design and how can we improve design regulations to mainstream it? (Chris Green, UDIA) Biodiversity Audit: What are the critical information gaps in biodiversity info and how can we obtain the information needed and collect it innovatively? (Richard Hobbs, UWA)

Five NatureLink focus areas

After the extended discussion session, where some quite passionate statements from both panellists and audience about clearing for development, loss of species, habitat and expertise, and the need to integrate and liberate knowledge, attendees were asked to indicate what they considered their top three priorities. The resulting graph, from 118 individuals, is shown below – improving planning and building regulation were considered key priorities, as was increased community awareness, engagement and advocacy.

Naturelink panel discussion – top three priorities

In the afternoon session we heard from a number of the brilliant young NatureLink interns, most about to complete their studies, as well as local case studies on nature projects – Cockburn Community Wildlife Corridor (Sue Marsh), Saving Urban Turtles (Anthony Santoro, Murdoch U.), and Piney Lakes design trends (Kelly Fowler, City of Melville). The final keynote by Tom Hatton (EPA) was an inspiring call to listen to and work with the next generation, for the future. The take-home message to me was that local actions are the only real way to achieve global outcomes.

The immediate outcome of the symposium for the NatureLink team was to how to move into their collaborative phase using the information provided at the symposium. A precis of these considerations by this smaller workshop was distributed.

The following day I attended a morning session on The Circular Economy, organised by the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre (AMGC) and hosted by the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIWA). The ‘Circular Economy’ is a strategy for changing the way to produce, assemble, sell and use products to minimise waste and to reduce environmental impact, while being advantageous to business by maximising the use of valuable resources and contributing to innovation, growth and job creation. The graphic at right simply illustrates the key difference between a linear and circular economy. The keynote speaker proposed that to the ‘4 Rs’ of Return, Reuse, Repair and Recycle can be added a fifth – Re-form.

Linear vs Circular economies

The keynote speaker was Professor Veena Sahajwalla, Director of the UNSW SMaRT Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology. Veena and her team are working closely with industry partners to deliver the new science, processes and technologies that will drive the redirection of many of the world’s most challenging waste streams away from landfills and back into production; simultaneously reducing costs to alleviating pressures on the environment.

She is reimagining the global supply chain by demonstrating the viability of ‘mining’ our overburdened landfills to harness the wealth of useful elements like carbon, hydrogen and materials like silica, titania and metals embedded in our waste. One of the key elements to this vision is the implementation of smart micro-factories that can operate on a site as small as 50 square metres and can be located wherever waste may be stockpiled.

To round out this line of thought about “thinking global, acting local”, I happened to read an article the following day entitled Geoengineer the Planet? More Scientists Now Say It Must Be an Option. While it looked at a range of planetary-scale technologies for ameliorating global warming, it ended with a very local solution, which made me reflect on the way nature and human technology can co-exist in the future world. Here’s one quote from the article to finish.

In fact, natural regrowth is usually better than planting, since “allowing nature to choose which species predominate during natural regeneration allows for local adaptation and higher functional diversity,” says Robin Chazdon, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut. A study published in March by 87 researchers, including Chazdon, concluded that “secondary forests recover remarkably fast” with 80 percent of their species typically back in 20 years and 100 percent in 50 years.

It looks like it could be a win-win, delivering a climate payoff on the scale of geoengineering without any of the downsides. Tim Lenton of Exeter University, a proponent of research into geoengineering, says it could be an ideal solution. “I am against introducing new forcings such as sulphate aerosol injection in the stratosphere,” he says. “But I am in favor of emulating and enhancing natural feedback loops and cycles, such as regenerating degraded forests.”

It would, he says, strengthen the biosphere’s natural forces of self-regulation that British scientist James Lovelock has termed Gaia. Lenton has a new term for what is required. Not geoengineering, but Gaia-engineering.

If you’d like to talk about how our Gaia-software-engineering can help with your environmental projects or about any of the ideas presented here, then leave a comment below, start a chat with me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

Alex

The post NatureLink and the Circular Economy appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Why not try out this prototype phenology tool that I’ve also prepared using the ‘wandoo’ data yourself? Then leave a comment below, start a chat with me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

Alex

The post Phenological analysis of Eucalyptus wandoo for honey bee foraging appeared first on Gaia Resources.

At the moment there are a number of bee-related apps out there (like this list), mainly concerned with monitoring the progress of hives, honey production and record keeping. There are other ways apps could make our lives as beekeepers easier – including helping people to find “feral” hives and looking out for disease information.  I have put a few ideas about how spatial and mobile technology – things that we work in here at Gaia Resources – could be used to help hobbyist beekeepers like me.

1. The “Bee aware”* App – for the general public and local governments

Let’s imagine a beautiful breezy spring, abundant in flowers. Every hive feels the urge to multiply and to produce a swarm to conquer the unknown. Mind you, a healthy (improperly managed) hive can produce 3 or more swarms per year. Those feral swarms seek tree hollows, Telstra boxes, compost bins, wall cavities and other uncanny nooks. They have been known to take habitat from native species and allegedly destroy nests and take up breeding space. After the swarm settles in a space, it becomes a “feral” hive.

A surprise hive in your compost bin is not always welcome!

It’s worth to mention here that Apis mellifera, the European Honey Bee, is a feral species that has no native place in the Western Australian ecosystems.  It would be quite useful to have an app where a member of public, upon seeing a swarm or a hive, could take a few photos, answer a few questions about the type of the colony, general location, access and size and submit the data to the local government/approved beekeepers. These beekeepers can then take responsibility for the hive, it gets removed (or preferably, rehomed) and the job is closed in the app.

This would be a really interesting app as it could really help with the management of these feral hives, and people who are interested in rehoming and looking after these hives would be happy to help!

2. The “Bee healthy”* app – for beekeepers and local governments

Australia is the last continent without the (well named) Varroa destructor mite, and WA is still free of the small hive beetle.   An app that could detail the occurrence of pests, diseases and threats to bees can help policy makers and beekeepers to assess potential dangers to beekeeping (and general biosecurity) in an area. Vigilance is especially important close to ports, and this focus on biosecurity is one of the reasons why you can’t bring honey into Western Australia.

A healthy frame – why we have biosecurity controls in Western Australia

The wider community of beekeepers, especially those that move their hives around (we call them migratory beekeepers), would benefit from an app that lets the beekeepers log occurrences of disease, mysterious hive demise (colony collapse disorder) and the spread of pests. A user could upload pictures and description that could be collated, or sent to the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (formerly the Department of Agriculture) for assessment, similar to how the Department currently manages sightings of pests using the My Pest Guide.

The reporting is just one part of it though – this sort of information, if made available, could help to record colony collapses in specific areas so they could be assessed (e.g. was it caused by pesticides), could help to show the areas where American foulbrood (a bacteria that infects honey bee larvae) was identified and could possibly spread (e.g. a spatial 4km radius could be applied to the location) to show migratory beekeepers where to avoid.  This could go a step further to alert other app users within that sort of radius about the particular pest in their vicinity.

This one has the potential to be quite contentious – putting out information about disease can be problematic, but if we are to try to prevent the collapse of bees from ecosystems (yes, even the feral ones!) and all the terrible flow on effects that the loss of these important pollinators could cause, it seems to me to be worth a try, at least!

If you know of other apps, or would like to know more about how we can help you with mobile app development, research programs, data management or spatial information systems, then please leave a comment below, start a chat with us via a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

Alex

* Yes, we know there are apps out there with these sorts of names – and that these are really bad puns – but it helps describe the content, at least!

The post Reflections of a Hobbyist Beekeeper, Part Two appeared first on Gaia Resources.

When I heard that Alex Chapman was involved in one of UWA’s Honey Bee Products Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) projects, I felt like coming to the inception meeting with my smoker blazing and the bee suit on!

I was fascinated by the various Bee CRC projects that Alex has discussed with us in his time there. As a hobbyist beekeeper and a spatial analyst, I started thinking about other ways technology could play a role in providing a better outcome for beekeepers, the general public and the local government. I have to say that it’s not easy to manage the European Honeybee (Apis mellifera). Populations need to be controlled and hives managed properly to avoid swarming and spreading diseases. Also, professional beekeepers need to move hives to follow seasonal flora changes if they want to maximise profit.  

Barbara at our inception meeting – sorry, no, in her bee suit

Alex’s background in botany was useful to the CRC in helping collate data on flowering cycles of the native plant species that honey bees used for foraging for nectar and pollen. Converted to suit a web map or in the form of spatial matrix, this data becomes an invaluable resource for migratory beekeepers. It would allow them to track nectar flows and anticipate which sites will be most abundant in their target species at certain times of the year.

Honey bees on a Marri flower

As you may know, major WA target species are Jarrah and Marri. Honey gathered from those eucalypts is at least on par with New Zealand’s Manuka Honey (made from an Australian species of Leptospermum). They have strong antimicrobial properties, are high in antioxidants and good for the gut. They also come from an environment that is not marred with Varroa destructor – this means that hives are not treated with chemicals and honey has no residue in it.

Alex showed me the draft of the Flowering Calendar that he has been prototyping for the CRC. This example interactive map shows Myrtaceae species seasonal flowering patterns. Access to an online flowering calendar would give migratory beekeepers an idea where their target species are most abundant. If, combined with the current DBCA WA Beekeepers app as Alex has previously blogged about, it could also show the migratory beekeepers what apiary sites are available in the areas they are interested in. The only improvement I would suggest here is providing data on available apiary sites and maybe even adding a way to pre-book areas for a certain amount of time.

At the moment there are a few apps out there, mainly concerned with monitoring the progress of hives, honey production and record keeping. There are other ways apps could make our lives easier – including identification of the feral hives, disease information and helping the migratory beekeepers… but I have a few ideas that Alex and I have been discussing, and I’ll post more on that in a second blog.

Barbara will give us some of her ideas on these potential app ideas in part 2, coming soon!

In the meantime, if you’d like to give us your feedback on these tools, or would like to know more about how we can help you with research programs, data management or spatial information systems, then please leave a comment below, start a chat with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or email Alex directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

Alex

The post Reflections of a Hobbyist Beekeeper, Part One appeared first on Gaia Resources.