Explore trends in biodiversity with Citizen Science and Artificial Intelligence
This is a suggestion for a Degree Project for Bachelor's and Master's levels at the Department of Marine Sciences. Degree projects at the Department of Marine Sciences are done independently and must be written and assessed individually.
Subject: Marine Biology
Time effort/Project level: 15-60 HP/Master or Bachelor
Supervisors: Matthias Obst, Per Bergström
Main topic: Marine Biology and Data Science
Project background
The Kosterhavets National Park is Sweden's first marine national park. The area contains a highly diverse and unique marine ecosystem that is under active protection and management since 2009.
Close to the bottom of the Koster Fjord the conditions are very similar to those in the open Atlantic ocean and there are many bottom dwelling species living here, which are otherwise only found in deep Atlantic waters. Large sponges, starfish and cold-water corals are some of them.
But how well protected are these communities? Today, we still don't know very much about the health status of the seafloor habitats.
The aim of the project
We want to know how climate change and human activities influence the environmental conditions and the fauna of this area. We also want to know, which positive effects the protection of the area had on the seafloor habitats.
In order to study the long-term changes on the sea floor and understand what effects the protection status of the park has, we can use the images and movies collected with Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) in the Kosterhavets National Park, or other regions on the Swedish West coast.
Project description
In this project you will work with data experts and marine biologists to further develop our citizen science platform Koster Seafloor Observatory and further validate artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that recognise key ecological species in the seafloor imagery.
The work may also include development of public and academic education modules. You can use these algorithms to explore biodiversity data from the current and past underwater recordings and analyse how the fauna on the sea floor has changed in response to warmer waters, fishing, and protective measures.
Project group
We are a group of marine and social scientists as well as data experts who care about the protection and conservation of marine life, particularly the wonderful marine biodiversity of the Swedish West coast.
Partners include:
- Wildlife.ai
- SeAnalytics
- Center for Sea and Society
- Ocean Data Factory
- Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure
Contact
Supervisor: Matthias Obst
Email: matthias.obst@marine.gu.se