The Tracker

Goal

The Tracker, considers current approaches to tracking biodiversity and ecosystems as either exclusive to either biotic or abiotic factors and not the interdependency in how they interact to maintain their habitat. Our Goal as Team trackers is to compliment the field of acoustic technology and the existing technologies and approaches as the future of ecosystems monitoring and biodiversity tracking and to improve and automate the tracking of biodiversity. Through a:

1. Technical solution that is integrated into ecosystems, cross cutting across all fields.

2. Framework for approaching ecosystem studies, integrated with indigenous methods.

Background

Although the introduction of protected areas has seen previous increase in wildlife recovery, biodiversity and its ecosystems are increasingly under threat and on the brink of extinction due to the degradation and desertification of these ecosystems, its impact on the climate which force humans and wildlife further into threat zones such as poaching and human wildlife conflict. These biodiversity populations have seen drastic declines especially in the last two decades. ,affecting the protected areas and communal conservancies, depending on them. Desertification of land pushes communities further into conservation areas for agricultural land, which has seen an increase in human-wildlife conflict. Our ideated technical approach hopes to be of relevance to monitoring ecosystems and help the world regardless of whether or not the other SDGs have been completed by 2030. Analysing the data on the movement of biotic factors (animals and creatures) that make up the biodiversity of a particular region/biome has always revealed additional information in terms of climate, weather, soil conditions, water composition and more. such delicate balances that keep changing because of human activities, which help forecast such changes, our idea aims to achieve. Thus, our idea aims to forecast the ever changing delicate balances caused by human activities. By doing so, we aim to have flag devices that help us track the movement of the chosen species, collect the data of their preferred paths, habitats, how often they both change, and then analyse this data to understand the differences in the habitats of the particular area. We can then identify the species based on what features we want to track. An example of species could include bees, or megafauna.

Deployment approach

Step 1: Acquire a Kit (features - pre-designed with microphone, temperature sensor etc.).

Step 2: For an edge setup, e.g. get a temperature model, deploy it and see how the model

performs.

Step 3: Adjust the model and deploy.

Conclusion

The solution is intended to be interdependent, interoperable, non-intrusive and efficient in monitoring the movement and interaction of all biotic factors, especially in biomes with red-flagged species on the brink of extinction, such as pangolins, elephants, and rhinos, where authorities have considered discomforting tracking solutions such as tracking collars, and gps trackers to mention a few.