Optimizing monitoring techniques for secretive marsh birds

Monitoring species is the foundation of conservation management. Rapid world changes on both the environmental and economic front are placing pressure on ecologists to adopt novel technologies that enable them to monitor smarter, faster and in a cost-effective manner. Yet it is also important that ecologists remain connected with the foundations of their discipline and with traditional practice. This tension between the new and the old constitutes part of the context and backdrop to my thesis. Management of conservation programs is in a state of flux. Big data, with all the opportunities it affords and difficulties it imposes, is now a reality in the field of conservation. It demands that researchers with widely different skill sets, biological and computational, work collaboratively to share knowledge across their complementary areas of expertise.