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Clipped onto a rope, climbing high up in a tree swaying in gusts of wind, Topher White finally reaches the roof of the rainforest and opens a laptop to run checks on a machine he built to transmit 24-hour live sound from the surrounding forest.
7 Min Read SOLOK, Indonesia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Clipped onto a rope, climbing high up in a tree swaying in gusts of wind, Topher White finally reaches the roof of the rainforest and opens a laptop to run checks on a machine he built to transmit 24-hour live sound from the surrounding forest. The machine is one of 27 “Guardian” sensors eavesdropping on forests in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province, to listen out for chainsaws as a way to tackle illegal logging in the region. Over the next five or six years, White hopes to install tens of thousands of these audio sensors in fore...
17th December 2020 1:02 pm Hitachi Vantara and Rainforest Connection have announced a solution using cloud-based AI software to predict illegal logging and prevent deforestation. Rainforest Connection CEO Topher White with guardian device on forest treetop Non-profit organisation Rainforest Connection aims to make a difference in the fight against climate change using its ‘guardian’ devices – small, android-run devices placed in the rainforest treetops – to pick up sounds and stream them to the cloud. “Protecting forests is critical to climate change,” explained Rainforest Con...
Dec 10, 2020 1. Conserving species The Living Planet Index produced by WWF estimates that wildlife population sizes have dropped by 68 per cent since 1970. The charity advocates the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool of conservation technology to monitor and curb this alarming rate of decline. One of the most useful applications is in acoustic monitoring, recording the sounds of wildlife ecosystems on weatherproof sensors. Many animals, from birds and bats to mammals and even invertebrates, use sound for communication, navigation and territorial defence, providing reams of rich d...