Data and observation challenges for natural capital accounting

Location: Room 275, Global Change Institute (20), UQ St Lucia & Online.

A Zoom webinar link will be emailed to registrants closer to the day of the event.

This presentation is for those who love big data and its application to conservation. Using real data, this talk will explore:

• the difficulties of establishing standard observation methods, and having them adopted and used consistently over the long term
• what we think we have learnt about trends over the past decade, especially in the face of changes in land use and conservation management
• how we have obtained the data to show the trends
• whether random records can be useful in establishing trends
• what to do with gaps in a long-term record
• whether signs of threatened species count as much as actual sightings

Speaker Bio:
Dr Sarah McGrath is the Project Officer for the Threatened Species Index (TSX) at the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN). The TSX integrates long-term monitoring data for Australia’s threatened species to estimate abundance trends. A key focus of her role is working with data providers to incorporate their data into the index to generate up-to-date and reliable trends in abundance at national, state and regional levels.