![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jan. 10th, 2006 12:21 pmI made it to my lecture! Yeah! My course looks interesting - we have an essay in which we compile information about a single habitat or species of our choice in the form of a book chapter, which is probably what I do best. Excellent.
All through my lecture I was also considering that biologists are kind of shit at using the internet. I mean, we put up publications and engage in online learning and have lovely informative websites for the public, but we don't really use it as a conglomerative research tool. It seems to me that biologists tend to have specialist areas which are poorly linked to form a big picture. I was contemplating the importance of a website of some sort where you could enter information such as soil pH, soil type, wind, temperature, species composition, etc. for various dates, industrial development stages and coordinates, and from that derive environmental trends by regression and environments necessary for certain species, and thus make predictions, that are continually being refined as more data is added, about the expected future biodiversity of the entire world. It's then theoretically possible to collect a huge amount of data from anybody who leaves their home, not just academic specialists. I picture it as a zoomable map, and for any area you can select to view any uploaded pictures, the regression graphs for temperature, species composition, etc., and a list of species including those which are expected to become threatened at a given year, given current environmental trends. You could also create food webs and competition standards, and then use that information to decide where to place coniferous plantations and reintroduce species, etc. I think it would be pretty cool, and would engage the public and encourage communication between biologists no matter the field of specialisation.
I must buysome food, an alarm clock, and make a doctor's appointment.
All through my lecture I was also considering that biologists are kind of shit at using the internet. I mean, we put up publications and engage in online learning and have lovely informative websites for the public, but we don't really use it as a conglomerative research tool. It seems to me that biologists tend to have specialist areas which are poorly linked to form a big picture. I was contemplating the importance of a website of some sort where you could enter information such as soil pH, soil type, wind, temperature, species composition, etc. for various dates, industrial development stages and coordinates, and from that derive environmental trends by regression and environments necessary for certain species, and thus make predictions, that are continually being refined as more data is added, about the expected future biodiversity of the entire world. It's then theoretically possible to collect a huge amount of data from anybody who leaves their home, not just academic specialists. I picture it as a zoomable map, and for any area you can select to view any uploaded pictures, the regression graphs for temperature, species composition, etc., and a list of species including those which are expected to become threatened at a given year, given current environmental trends. You could also create food webs and competition standards, and then use that information to decide where to place coniferous plantations and reintroduce species, etc. I think it would be pretty cool, and would engage the public and encourage communication between biologists no matter the field of specialisation.
I must buy
