Penguin watch: Large Scale Penguin Research and Conservation in The Southern Ocean

Mercoledi 16 gennaio 2019, ore 14.00 - Aula C

presso il Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Fiona Jones (Department of Zoology, Oxford University, UK) terrà un seminario dal titolo "Penguin watch: Large Scale Penguin Research and Conservation in The Southern Ocean"

Short description:
Monitoring of penguin colonies in the Southern Ocean has proved difficult historically, mainly owing to harsh environmental conditions and remote study sites. The Penguin Lifelines project has adopted a novel approach to monitoring, which makes large-scale conservation efforts feasible. Together with the Australian Antarctic Division we have ~140 remote time-lapse cameras, spread across the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. The wealth of photographic information generated by this camera network is processed with the help of citizen science through the Penguin Watch project (https://www.penguinwatch.org) - part of a larger citizen science platform: Zooniverse (https://www.zooniverse.org).
My PhD project aims to use the data generated by Penguin Watch to examine the health of specific penguin colonies and to better understand the threats they face. These include climate change (and related changes in sea ice distribution), pollution and fishing (particularly of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), which is a keystone species in the Southern Ocean ecosystem). In this DST invited lecture I will talk about my most recent trip to the Antarctic and how the work we do is helping to inform conservation policy and increase public recognition of the increasing climatic and industrial problems developing in the Antarctic.

Some details about Fiona Jones:
A 3rd Year PhD student on the DTP programme at Oxford University [Green Templeton College].
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