NBI Research Conference Keynote: Naturalists in the Information Age

Title: Naturalists in the Information Age: How Smartphones, Artificial Intelligence and Social Media Changed the Study of Biodiversity Forever

Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Science Coordinator Mark Faherty delivers the keynote talk for the 2021 Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative Research Conference.

For those interested in natural history study, especially identifying and cataloguing plants and animals, things are very different than they were just 10 years ago. It’s a brave new world of smartphone apps, now with artificial intelligence-driven automated identification features, many built into global-scale citizen science projects with data available to researchers everywhere. Built in crowd-sourcing gives any user access to national or worldwide experts in different taxa in a way not formerly possible.

Mark will talk about the most prominent of these apps and projects, including eBird and the companion app Merlin, iNaturalist/Seek, and other apps, plus the increasing and often surprisingly useful role of social media for increasing the ranks of educated natural history enthusiasts.

Free admission. All attendees are required to wear masks.

The Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative's mission is to conserve the native biodiversity of Nantucket through collaborative research, monitoring and education. NBI hosts a Citizen Scientist Weekend and the research conference. For more information, please visit NBI's website.