Advanced course cE3c “Use of Technology in Field Biology”
31 July 2023
The advanced course "Use of Technology in Field Biology '' took place between 6-9 June 2023 at Herdade da Ribeira Abaixo (HRA), one of the sites included in the Portuguese LTsER Montado platform. This course focused on the use of technological tools, which are increasingly employed in the collection of animal ecology field data, mainly due to the development of equipment that allows for automatic recording and storage of environmental information.
The students received training on the use of movement tracking devices (e.g., GPS loggers, geolocators), environmental variable data loggers (e.g., for recording temperature or water depth), passive acoustic monitoring devices (audiomoths), drones, camera trapping, and species identification apps (e.g., iNaturalist, Merlin). At the end of the course, the students applied the acquired knowledge by conducting a practical fieldwork using several of these devices. The results of species identification using the different technologies were entered by the students into a project specifically created for this iNaturalist platform.
Students made 444 observations of 162 species, including species that are challenging to observe such as the otter, the stone marten, and the genet, which were registered on camera traps, and the golden oriole, the cuckoo, and the nightingale, recorded with the audiomoths.
