Intelligent Earth Seminar: Peggy Bevan (UCL)

4 March 14:00
Seminar Room 1a, Doctoral Training Centre, 1-4 Keble Rd

 

pegprofile

Peggy Bevan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the People & Nature Lab at UCL, UK. She received her PhD in biodiversity monitoring jointly from UCL and the Zoological Society of London. She works in the broad area of technology-based biodiversity monitoring, with a particular focus on passive sensor data, automated survey methods, and the statistical modelling of noisy, multi-source ecological datasets. Her research interests centre on the application of machine learning, robotics, and novel sensor technologies to scalable, standardised biodiversity monitoring and environmental policy.

How automated, tech-driven monitoring can help address the biodiversity crisis

 

Establishing a global biodiversity observation network demands a rigorous understanding of how new data sources interact with established monitoring frameworks. In this talk, I explore the scientific and methodological challenges that arise when integrating emerging technologies such as camera traps, eDNA, and autonomous drone-based acoustic surveys into biodiversity monitoring pipelines. I examine how uncertainty introduced by machine learning classifiers, novel sensor modalities, and automated data collection propagates through to the metrics and ecological inferences we can reliably draw. Drawing on examples from my own research, I show how these technologies not only change the type of data we collect, but open the door to entirely new analytical approaches and biodiversity metrics beyond traditional species richness. Together, these examples illustrate how technology-driven monitoring can be embedded within the broader conservation landscape to deliver scalable, decision-grade biodiversity intelligence.