What is the Center for Conservation Informatics?
The Center for Conservation Informatics at the Institute of the Environment is an initiative aimed at leveraging technological advancements to address critical conservation challenges. At its core, the program focuses on harnessing the power of information technology, data science, and computational methods to enhance conservation efforts in California, nationally, and worldwide.
What does the Center for Conservation Informatics do?
One of the flagship initiatives within the Conservation Informatics program is the development of the Internet of Conservation (IoC). The emerging IoC includes data, software, hardware, interoperability standards, semantically-enabled cyberinfrastructure, AI tools, sensor networks, and, critically, stakeholder networks. The goal is the creation of an interoperable global network that enables conservation planners and implementers to easily access and interpret large amounts of heterogeneous environmental data with unprecedented granularity.
The Conservation Informatics program emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together experts from diverse fields such as ecology, computer science, geography, and environmental policy. By fostering collaboration between researchers, technologists, and conservation practitioners, the program cultivates innovative solutions that address complex conservation challenges from multiple perspectives.
One focus within the program is conservation science in working landscapes, recognizing the importance of agricultural and other multi-use landscapes to meeting biodiversity goals. Working with a broad diversity of stakeholders, we work on developing technological tools for connecting disparate data to help answer complex, multi-disciplinary conservation questions and to curate this information into integrated, well-documented, and readily query able repositories.
The Conservation Informatics program highlights the role of improved information technologies in safeguarding biodiversity, preserving natural resources, and promoting sustainable development for future generations.
Director: Patrick Huber
Chief Data Scientist: Allan Hollander
Project Scientist: Jessica Chiartas
Graduate Student Researcher: Emily Steliotes
