The resources available to naturalists, biologists, ecologists and, in general, scientists who investigate the environment and nature have multiplied exponentially. If decades ago the main way of obtaining data was to put on your boots and put a notebook and a camera in your backpack, the situation is much more complex now. Satellites, remote sensing, data from weather services, weather balloons, social media postings, or even the most modest face-to-face surveys provide bulk data to scientists. The incorporation of all these sources into ecology is a qualitative leap for science and, at the same time, requires the establishment of a procedure that allows hundreds of crossed data to be handled safely. The University of Granada (UGR) launched two years ago the project Smart EcoMountainsincluded in the European initiative LifeWatch ERIC to, among other things, establish a protocol capable of making sense of this tidal wave of data and developing an algorithm capable of analyzing and predicting climate change. At the same time that Sierra Nevada is being monitored and the consequences of climate change in this natural environment are being assessed, a method of integration and validation of data from various sources is being developed “that allows analyzing these with a global vision,” explains Regino. Zamora, professor of Ecology at the UGR and scientific coordinator of the project, “so that it can be used by any scientist in any other ecosystem or natural environment on the planet.”
More than 125 researchers make up the team of Smart EcoMountains. “We have generated 40 direct contracts,” says Zamora, satisfied. And since much of the work is data analysis, as in all or almost all projects, many of the team members are computer developers. It is evident that, also in line with the times, nature will not be alien to the omnipresent artificial intelligence (AI) and, for this reason, this project, endowed with six million euros, has among its fundamental objectives the development of new technological tools and services for the environment and its sustainability from remote sensing and AI. Enrique Herrera Viedma, principal investigator of the project and professor at the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Granada, defines it as “an innovation project that will be capable of generating an infrastructure for climate change analysis” and that will be available to whoever needs it.
For Herrera, also vice-rector for Research and Transfer at the UGR, as well as one of the most highly cited scientists in his field in the world, “sustainability is one of the three issues that most concern humanity. Clean, new and responsible energies Information Technologies and Sustainability are crucial today and that is why the UGR has decided to investigate and position itself in all of them. We are in the IFMIF Dones nuclear fusion project, we focus on responsible artificial intelligence research and, when it comes to sustainability and the fight against climate change, this project puts us in gear to develop up-to-date algorithms.” Herrera explains that the search for sustainable projects involves modernizing many of the algorithms in use now to make them more energetically and environmentally responsible.
In research, which involves flora, fauna and the atmosphere and their interrelationship, observational data continues to be essential in situ, on the ground, but the method has become very sophisticated. For example, satellite data are essential, explains Zamora. “There are free access and there are others for payment,” says the scientist. For the rest, between the excursion to the field and the reception of data from the confines of space there is an intermediate field, sometimes classic, as is the case with face-to-face surveys, or unexpected, such as research on social networks.
Surveys and social networks
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The project has a part dedicated to the impact of the population on the territory in which the Diputación de Granada has been strongly involved. It is in this plot that, for example, surveys are required. “We do them because we need to know what people do and what preferences they have when they visit certain territories,” explains Zamora. On the other hand, the presence of people in nature entails photos and exposure on social networks, which has turned them into an excellent mine of data to analyze and exploit. From the one who tracks butterflies and posts a photo of him on Facebook to the one who goes hiking and posts something on Instagram, everything is likely to be incorporated as data into the situation study of Sierra Nevada. But everything, explains the professor of Ecology, must be done with a scientifically validated method that can be used in other contexts.
The data from this study, which will be offered openly, is proposed, according to Zamora, at three levels of communication: “for scientists, for those responsible for legislating on the matter and, finally, for the public. Each one will be able to select the information that interests them the most”, explains the scientist. Asked about the current situation in Sierra Nevada, Zamora is not pessimistic. “Sierra Nevada has obvious problems derived from climate change”, he assures, but also affirms that it is a mountain accustomed to variability, “as is typical of Mediterranean climate environments”.
Smart EcoMountains It was born in 2021 and is based at the IISTA, the Interuniversity Institute for Research on the Earth System of Andalusia, the former Andalusian Center for the Environment, with part of its computing infrastructure at the university’s Institute of Computing Sciences. It is a project that was thought for more years, but that will finally be two. Therefore, its end is near. The researchers, however, bet on its continuation. For this reason, Herrera is already working on the design and creation of what could be called the Sustainability-Oriented Artificial Intelligence Center, which would arise from the knowledge generated in which he now concludes. “There is no better natural laboratory than Sierra Nevada in the fight against climate change,” says Herrera. And there is no better technological laboratory than the one that the UGR can create, he says “We have achieved the Smart EcoMountains because those who evaluated it believed that it was the best of those presented and they valued it that way, so that allows us to believe that we are prepared to continue on this path”, points out the researcher. The next thing now is to get the necessary support and turn Sierra Nevada into the national laboratory for monitoring and providing solutions against climate change.
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