Data. Data that are collected in a fast, accurate, cheap, and reproducible manner. This task sounds easy, but it is in fact it remains one of the most important challenges that ecologists are faced with to understand and predict how ecological systems may response to disturbance and climate change. In the SalGo Team we are developing field-based and computer-based solutions to expedite how ecological data are integrated into ecological models.
We are collaborating with leaders in autonomous robotics and AI from the Oxford Robotics Institute, as well as monitoring ecosystems in South Africa, China, and the UK using UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles; aka drones), to integrate all of these technologies and computer algorithms for a faster, cheaper, and more reliable pipeline of ecological understanding and prediction.