CyberSEES: Type 2: Collaborative Research: Cyber-infrastructure and Technologies to Support Large-Scale Wildlife Monitoring and Research for Wildlife and Ecology Sustainability

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Minimizing the impact of human actions on wildlife is a priority for conservation biology. Distributed motion-sensitive cameras, or camera traps, are popular tools for monitoring wildlife populations. Recent work has shown that camera trap surveys can be expanded to large scales by crowdsourcing through citizen science, producing big data sets needed to evaluate the effect of sustainability strategies on wildlife populations. However, these large-scale surveys create millions of photographs that create new challenges for data processing and quality control. This project seeks to develop advanced computing technologies for cloud-based large-scale data sensing, analysis, annotation, management, and preservation for wildlife and ecological sustainability to inform effective resource management, decision-making, and polices on human actions to protect wildlife and natural resources. Specifically, the project aims to: (1) explore a citizen scientist-based approach and system for large-scale sustainable data collection; (2) develop deep-learning based fine-grain animal species recognition from large data sets and automated content annotation; (3) study cloud-based computing with thin-client access and resource allocation for scalable deployment and easy access by citizen scientists; and (4) develop a comprehensive data annotation quality monitoring and control framework with tightly coupled computer annotation, crowd-sourcing, and expert review to ensure a high scientific standard of data quality. These tools will be integrated into the eMammal infrastructure to study three questions on wildlife sustainability: energy development, housing development, and wildlife harvest. These tools will also be available to other wildlife researchers using the eMammal system, enabling an improved understanding how humans can live sustainably with wildlife. Collaborative wildlife monitoring and tracking at large geographical and time scales will contribute to the understanding of complex dynamics of wildlife systems, and provide important scientific evidence for informed decisions and effective solutions to sustainability issues in wildlife environments. This project will provide unique, exciting, and interdisciplinary opportunities for mentoring graduate students and involving K-12 and undergraduate students into professionally guided research. The citizen science approach used in this project should accommodate hundreds of students in research.