Mammal Species Inventory - Madikwe Game Reserve: Report 1 - June 2018 to November 2019

SnapshotSafari is a transnational program aiming at providing a greater knowledge about mammal populations accross southern Africa. Thanks to standardized camera traps (CTs) grid, deployed in various locations reflecting a diversity of conservation states (from protected areas to highly transformed areas), SnapshotSafari aims at describing mammal population abundances, diversities and spatial occurrences. The data provided will benefit Research, in fields as broad as Genetics, Ecology or conservation Biology, as well by providing to conservation planning a comprehensive synthesis of which species can be found in their location, with which abundance...etc.

The project is coordinated in South Africa by Nelson by Mandela University’s Wildlife Ecology Lab. The images collected by the CTs (as much as thousands per site) are sent to the United States (University of Minnesota) to be processed via a participative science plateform (Zooniverse) and machine learning (a popular IT field that allows automatized recognition of elements in an image, for instance antelopes in a landscape photo).

SnapshotSafari是一项跨国研究项目，旨在增进对南部非洲全境哺乳动物种群的深入认知。该项目依托标准化布设的红外相机陷阱（camera traps, CTs）网格，布设点位覆盖了从保护区到高强度开发区域等多种保护等级各异的生境，旨在刻画哺乳动物的种群丰度、物种多样性与空间分布特征。所提供的数据集将为遗传学、生态学、保护生物学等多个领域的研究提供支撑，同时可为保护规划工作提供目标区域内物种分布与种群丰度的全面综合资料，助力相关决策优化。

本项目在南非由纳尔逊·曼德拉大学野生动物生态实验室负责协调。红外相机陷阱采集的图像（单站点最多可达数千张）将被送往美国明尼苏达大学，通过公众科学平台Zooniverse与机器学习（machine learning，一种可实现图像元素自动化识别的热门信息技术领域，例如识别景观照片中的羚羊）完成标注与处理工作。