HELICS

Happy Biodiversity Day! 🌱🐼🌍

Enjoyed this camera trap video, with one small step in the fight against habitat fragmentation 🦧

Brilliant work from our Data Science MSc students today! New dashboard tracking online interest in species worldwide 📊🦎🌿 Discovering which species people search for—and what that tells us about conservation priorities. Stay tuned! #DataScience #BiodiversityConservation

🚨🚨New research alert: Spotted hyaena distribution in Kenya is shaped not just by prey or livestock, but by humans’ propensity to kill them. Understanding human behavior is key to carnivore #conservation. 🌍🍪 Open access: sciencedirect.com/science/articl… @helsinkiuni

The planet’s undisturbed old-growth boreal forests may be far more important in the fight against climate change than previously realized, according to a new Science study, which finds that primary forests in Sweden store over 70% more carbon than managed secondary forests. Learn more: scim.ag/4uL06hL

Conservation planning experts in training ✨ The annual Spatial conservation planning course at #HelsinkiUni is well underway, led by HELICS members. Today is our second practical on using the cutting-edge Zonation 5 conservation prioritization software. Exciting stuff! 🖥️🌍🌿

Great catch-up and celebrations for a new paper out! At today’s HELICS meeting, we had our regular catch-up, shared recent research progress, and celebrated Federico’s new paper out with oat cookies, macarons and bubbles. Cheers!🥂

New in @PLOSONE: Our protocol for a global systematic map of the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss. Full paper: doi.org/10.1371/journa… Congrats to Federico Grossi & the team! 👏 #ConservationScience #Biodiversity (2/2)

What causes biodiversity loss? Land- and sea-use change, overexploitation, invasive species, climate change, and pollution are the direct drivers pushing species towards extinction - but what are the indirect drivers behind them? 📉(1/2)

Destroying wild ecosystems doesn't just reduce biodiversity but has repercussions for local communities losing ecosystem services and contributes to the climate disaster by eliminating these valuable carbon sinks. At HELICS we're examining the drivers behind trends like this.

Social media may provide data that can revolutionise our understanding of species distribution - and strengthen global biodiversity datasets, for example. New paper by iDiv alumnus @shawan_c in Conservation Biology: idiv.de/social-media-i…

Happy #WorldWildlifeDay! Let's keep doing the work to bring more and more wild populations towards recovery.

It’s the Saimaa ringed seal! 🦭 1️⃣ Population: <200 in Finland 2️⃣ Tracks: Oversized paw prints in snow 3️⃣ Habitat: Only in Lake Saimaa Want to know more?❄️ Take a look at: pnas.org/doi/full/10.10… #SaimaaSeal #WildlifeConservation

Guess the endangered species 🌊 1️⃣ Fewer than 200 of us live in Finland 2️⃣ We leave oversized tracks in fresh snow 3️⃣ Our home is a freshwater lake in Saimaa Did you guess? 🤔 #EndangeredSpecies #Conservation

Fuel for ideas and a taste of tradition 🍰 At today’s HELICS meeting, as we discussed upcoming teaching courses, we enjoyed a laskiaispulla a cardamom bun with cream, traditional for Laskiainen. Almond paste or jam, which do you prefer? #HELICS #Laskiainen #Finland

Great talks on network science & biodiversity complexity for Federico Grossi with Anne-Sophie Crépin and @Daniel_AvOr at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics. Sharp feedback & perfect weather for a face-to-face encounter with Stockholm's nature (frozen lake dip included)!

Abigail Parker & Fedor Zolotarev presented two #BIOBANG posters at #SBDIDays in Stockholm. Tough crowd when you're competing with a life-size moose for attention, but the poster session brought great conversations! #BiodiversityInformatics #ComputerVision #AIforEcology

🚨New Research Alert! 🌍 Evidence from 14 nature-dependent communities shows that sites with higher perceived climate change impacts report lower life satisfaction. #WellBeing #ClimateImpacts #IndigenousPeoples @HELICS_Lab @helsinkiuni besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

You can also keep up with our latest work on LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/helsin… and our research stories and travels on instagram instagram.com/helics_lab/

We're kicking off posting here to share our work on conservation science! We work especially with digital data to understand biodiversity loss, illegal wildlife trade, and human-nature interactions. Follow along for updates on the work of our interdisciplinary team.