This edited volume focuses on the latest and most impactful advancements of multimedia data globally available for environmental and earth biodiversity. The data reflects the status, behavior, change as well as human interests and concerns which are increasingly crucial for understanding environmental issues and phenomena. This volume addresses the need for the development of advanced methods, techniques and tools for collecting, managing, analyzing, understanding and modeling environmental & biodiversity data, including the automated or collaborative species identification, the species distribution modeling and their environment, such as the air quality or the bio-acoustic monitoring. Researchers and practitioners in multimedia and environmental topics will find the chapters essential to their continued studies.

Functional Microbiomes II, Volume 68 in the Advances in Ecological Research series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters written by an international board of authors. Chapters include Investigating the core microbiome concept: Daphnia as a case study and Soil Microbiome - Provides the authority and expertise of leading contributors from an international board of authors - Presents the latest release in Advances in Ecological Research series - Includes the latest information on Managing Conflict in Agricultural, Urban and Tropical Ecosystems

Until recently, values and benefits from protected areas have often been underestimated as well as taken for granted. Protected Area Management - Recent Advances demonstrates that there are deep necessities in how the wider scientific, environmental, socioeconomic, and cultural values that these natural ecosystems provide should increasingly be recognized. The book highlights various approaches for managing and conserving protected areas to respond to some pressing global challenges such as climate change, demand for food and energy, overexploitation, and habitat change. It addresses these issues in five main sections that cover biodiversity and genetic resources; protected marine areas; community, ecotourism, and protected areas; and protected area conservation and monitoring.

Little did Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and other ‘gentlemen scientists’ know, when they were making their scientific discoveries, that some centuries later they would inspire a new field of scientific practice and innovation, called citizen science. The current growth and availability of citizen science projects and relevant applications to support citizen involvement is massive; every citizen has an opportunity to become a scientist and contribute to a scientific discipline, without having any professional qualifications. With geographic interfaces being the common approach to support collection, analysis and dissemination of data contributed by participants, ‘geographic citizen science’ is being approached from different angles. Geographic Citizen Science Design takes an anthropological and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) stance to provide the theoretical and methodological foundations to support the design, development and evaluation of citizen science projects and their user-friendly applications. Through a careful selection of case studies in the urban and non-urban contexts of the Global North and South, the chapters provide insights into the design and interaction barriers, as well as on the lessons learned from the engagement of a diverse set of participants; for example, literate and non-literate people with a range of technical skills, and with different cultural backgrounds. Looking at the field through the lenses of specific case studies, the book captures the current state of the art in research and development of geographic citizen science and provides critical insight to inform technological innovation and future research in this area.

This book presents high-quality, peer-reviewed papers from the International Conference in Information Technology & Education (ICITED 2023), to be held at the Nilton Lins University, Manaus, Brazil, during June 29–30, 2023. The book covers a specific field of knowledge. This intends to cover not only two fields of knowledge—Education and Technology—but also the interaction among them and the impact/result in the job market and organizations. It covers the research and pedagogic component of Education and Information Technologies but also the connection with Society, addressing the three pillars of higher education. The book addresses impact of pandemic on education and use of technology in education. Finally, it also encourages companies to present their professional cases which will be discussed. These can constitute real examples of how companies are overcoming their challenges with the uncertainty of the market.

The rapid advances of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years have led to numerous creative applications in science. Accelerating the productivity of science could be the most economically and socially valuable of all the uses of AI.

The two-volume set, LNCS 13325 and 13326, are conference proceedings that constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, DAPI 2022, held as part of the 24th International Conference, HCI International 2022, which took place during June-July 2022. The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 58 papers of DAPI 2022 are organized in topical sections named for each volume: Part I: User Experience and Interaction Design for Smart Ecosystems; Smart Cities, Smart Islands, and Intelligent Urban Living; Smart Artifacts in Smart Environments; and Opportunities and Challenges for the Near Future Smart Environments Part II: Smart Living in Pervasive IoT Ecosystems; Distributed, Ambient, and Pervasive Education and Learning; Distributed, Ambient, and Pervasive Well-being and Healthcare; and Smart Creativity and Art.

The use of digital technology in our societies is growing to meet the ever-increasing challenges of data collection, raising awareness, education and understanding nature. Artificial intelligence, for example, appears to be the answer to collecting massive amounts of data on biodiversity at a global scale and facilitating citizen participation in such data collection. Linking with Nature in the Digital Age explores the reconfiguration of our relationship with nature within this digital framework. This book examines this mediated linking from three angles. Firstly, it shows how digital technology can foster the development of links to nature. Then, it describes in greater detail the materiality of these links and how they have evolved with the developments in information technology. Finally, it questions the belief in the digital as a facilitator and opens up new perspectives on our relationship with nature and the living world

This open access book discusses how the involvement of citizens into scientific endeavors is expected to contribute to solve the big challenges of our time, such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity, growing inequalities within and between societies, and the sustainability turn. The field of citizen science has been growing in recent decades. Many different stakeholders from scientists to citizens and from policy makers to environmental organisations have been involved in its practice. In addition, many scientists also study citizen science as a research approach and as a way for science and society to interact and collaborate. This book provides a representation of the practices as well as scientific and societal outcomes in different disciplines. It reflects the contribution of citizen science to societal development, education, or innovation and provides and overview of the field of actors as well as on tools and guidelines. It serves as an introduction for anyone who wants to get involved in and learn more about the science of citizen science.