Seminar: Precision Conservation Takes Flight in Pollinators

Uarizona
Assistant Professor, Citizen and Data Science

ABSTRACT: Information on species distributions underlies nearly every aspect of managing biodiversity, including efforts to conserve rare species, anticipate problematic invasions, identify biodiversity hotspots and delimit valued habitat types yet species distributions are often coarse or incomplete especially for those hard to identify and track organisms like insects. Here we leverage a burgeoning data supply generated by the efforts of butterfly enthusiasts to create species distribution models through machine learning approaches. These models provide a tool for mapping habitat and produce information to inform conservation decision making in a quickly changing world.