Mammal Species Inventory: Mountain Zebra National Park Report 1: October 2017 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).

快照探险（SnapshotSafari）是一项跨国研究项目，旨在深化人们对南非南部地区哺乳动物种群的认知。依托部署于涵盖多样保护状态区域（从严格保护区到高度开发区域）的标准化红外相机（camera traps, CT）阵列，快照探险旨在刻画哺乳动物种群的丰度、多样性与空间分布特征。该项目所产出的数据将惠及遗传学、生态学、保护生物学等诸多领域的研究，同时可为保护规划提供目标区域内物种组成与种群丰度的全面综合资料，助力相关决策工作。

该项目在南非由纳尔逊·曼德拉大学（Nelson Mandela University）野生动物生态学实验室负责协调。红外相机采集的图像（单站点单次采集可达数千张）将被送往美国明尼苏达大学（University of Minnesota），通过众包科学平台（Zooniverse）与机器学习（machine learning）技术进行处理：机器学习作为当前热门的信息技术领域，可实现图像内容的自动识别，例如识别景观照片中的羚羊等动物。