Speaker
Description
Biodiversity seems to be under threat from a variety of sources. Traditionally urbanisation and agricultural expansion have claimed most of the land. More recently climate change has held the limelight. But poaching, particularly of plants, is an issue that has become dire within the last few years. Technology has changed the way field-research is undertaken, providing localities more accurately and quickly than ever before. Citizen Science platforms have been at the forefront of this push to obtain knowledge of our plants, both what they look like and where they occur. This is critical for making observations available for conservation, education and research. However, they have also provided a gateway for poachers who can readily obtain precise localities of plants. It's critical that a safer method of sharing observations is discovered. CASABIO has stepped up to this call by working on their next version of their citizen science platform. Hosted at the CSIR as part of the DIRISA ecosystem, the new platform is a radical restructuring of their old system. It introduces several new aspects that make it more efficient and able to handle an increasing diversity of media. We'll be presenting these advantages that aim to provide a new foundation for future Citizen Science.
