Credit: European Space Agency CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO (image cropped)
Earth Observation
Over 10,000 satellites are currently orbiting the Earth with up 30% more launched on a yearly basis. They capture electromagnetic information from ultraviolet to long-wave infrared and radar. The public availability of this ‘remote sensing’ data, through initiatives such as the Copernicus Open Access Hub, provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand our planet from space. Applications range from geophysics to oceanography, ecology, glaciology and human behaviour and development.
Artificial Intelligence
Machine learning methods such as deep convolutional neural networks are statistical algorithms which allow scientist to comb vast quantities of satellite images and discover key patterns. This can mean finding ‘the needle in the haystack’ across vast geographical territories or identifying changes over time in longitudinal data. As computing power grows these algorithms facilitate accurate models of how our planet will respond to human pressures and focus biological sampling to areas of critical sustainability risk.
Genome sequencing
Advances in next generation and mobile DNA sequencing technologies mean that accurate genetic information can be extracted at greater speed and lower cost than ever before. Bioinformatic exploration of this data ‘metagenomics’ allows us to examine biodiversity at an unprecedented scale, ranging from animals to plants, fungi, protists and bacteria. By overlaying this data with satellite imagery we can construct a living map of how the environment responds to human activity. Furthermore, functional analysis of these DNA sequences can pin point genes which have unique biotechnology potential.
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