Dear GOSH community,
During the first week of September 23, the Latin American network reGOSH met again, this time in Chile during the residency called “open technologies for the monitoring of biodiversity”. The event took place in the Patagonia Station from Pontificia Universidad Católica.
The motivation of this residency was to bring together the knowledge, devices and people of the network involved in the development and use of environmental monitoring systems, in order to share and integrate their different visions and capabilities. Access to an isolated “natural laboratory” such as the Patagonia UC station allowed this interaction to be carried out intensively and, in addition, to test the methodologies and devices in the extreme conditions of the place.
The main focus of the residency was on: i) the development of devices for the determination of physical-chemical parameters and the determination of pathogens through molecular diagnostic reactions in water; ii) to discuss and apply sampling methodologies to streams, rivers and lagoons. In this sense, the UC Station served as a pilot scenario due to the various water courses and reservoirs that surround it; iii) the integration, analysis and visualization of results to better understand and interact with the intrinsic complexity of these ecosystems.
During the residency, the entire sampling and analysis process was completed, testing in the field open hardware equipment and molecular biology tools and reactions. In addition, systems could be explored and prototyped for the statistical sampling of environmental pathogens and data integration and publication. Additionally, the discussion was opened on the commercialization of open source hardware as an alternative to the acquisition of closed technologies that do not have the capacity to adapt to new contexts and challenges. The development of new links and interactions that complemented the knowledge and interests of the people involved was also rescued.
The documentation of the residency is available (although we are still adding elements) at the following gitlab repository:
