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A Biodiversity-Friendly Brew?

This GCTT project brings the Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research together with Geography to use novel bioacoustic and 3D measurement technology to study the impact of agriculture on birds

Photographer: Alejandro Walter Salinas Lopez Copyright: © 2018 UCL. ISD Digital Media University College London. All Rights reserved.

1 September 2021

Grant

Grant: Grand Challenges Small Grants
Year awarded: 2021-22
Amount awarded: £5,000

Academics 

  • Marius Somveille, Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research
  • Mathias Disney, Geography 

A biodiversity-friendly brew? Using new technology to quantify the impact of coffee production on migratory birds aims to increase understanding how land-use change, particularly agricultural intensification, affects biodiversity. The work will focus on birds as they are excellent indicators of ecosystem health, and on coffee production, which affects important bird habitat, particularly for wintering migrants visiting from temperate regions.

The objectives of the study include:

  1. Testing predictions from ecological theory regarding how habitat degradation affects migratory birds and the resident communities they visit
  2. Providing a novel quantitative methodology based on transformative technology combining bioacoustics and 3D measurements of ecosystem structure for certifying bird-friendly coffee production

Outputs and Impacts

  •  For the first time, acoustic data to measure bird presence, LiDAR data to evaluate forest quality, and satellite data were combined to provide a comprehensive analysis. The study demonstrated a promising new approach to evaluate the biodiversity impacts of agricultural practices at larger scales, addressing current limitations in scalability and labour intensity.
  • The integrated method shows potential as a novel tool for assessing the environmental impact of coffee farming on biodiversity, with one MSc student already using these methods and the data collected for their dissertation.
  • The detailed results will be showcased in a journal in the near future.

 

Grand Challenge of Transformative Technology

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