Leveraging conservation action with open‐source hardware

Hi All

I wanted to highlight this (open access) paper if you haven’t already seen it:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12661

Hill, Andrew P., Alasdair Davies, Peter Prince, Jake L. Snaddon, C. Patrick Doncaster, and Alex Rogers. “Leveraging conservation action with open‐source hardware.” Conservation Letters (2019): e12661.

You’ll notice that many of the points raised echo our work in the GOSH Roadmap and discussions on the forum!

Abstract

Data collection by conservation biologists is undergoing radical change, with researchers collaborating across disciplines to create bespoke, low‐cost monitoring equipment from open‐source hardware (OSH). Compared to commercial hardware, OSH dramatically reduces participation costs. Four barriers currently hold back its wide adoption: (1) user inexperience inhibits initial uptake; (2) complex and costly manufacturing/distribution procedures impede global dissemination; (3) lack of creator support results in lapsed projects; and (4) lack of user support degrades continued utility in the field. Here, we propose a framework to address these barriers, illustrating how OSH offers a route to rapid expansion of community‐driven conservation action.

Also, some of the same authors just published on “AudioMoth: A low-cost acoustic device for monitoring biodiversity and the environment”

I don’t think any of the authors are currently on this forum but if you have any comments, suggestions, thoughts feel free to post and we could invite them :slightly_smiling_face:

Jenny

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