Anyone using SMART for recording planting/restoration or invasive plant species projects - let's chat!

Hi there,

Just thought I’d ask if anyone is successfully using SMART for the purpose of recording tree planting and survivorship, invasive species control and/or Fixed Point Photography? We have a site in our within our project that is focusing on habitat restoration and has multiple strategies going on that they would like to record. It would be great if we can connect with and learn from the experiences of others that have used SMART (and SMART Mobile) for these purposes so please get in touch if you’re willing to chat further.

Thanks
Lisa

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for your message.

@Tony is supporting a site using SMART for invasive species and @Enock is using SMART to monitor tree planting, hopefully they can share more info with you.

Thanks

Monica

Thanks Monica!

Tony and Enock I look forward to chatting further with you

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Hi Lisa, The Southern Lakes Sanctuary in New Zealand http://southernlakessanctuary.org.nz/ has started using SMART to monitor invasive predators and native birds impacted by possums, rats, stoats and other species. They are using SMART collect to gather information about the birds in subalpine areas, and SMART mobile for focused surveys of mohua’s and other endangered birds. They plan to also use SMART to create survey designs for 5 minute bird counts. Cheers Tony

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Thanks Tony. The site I’m working with are focusing on invasive flora rather than fauna but that work certainly sounds interesting. Are they using SMART collect for citizen science data collection?

Yes, the Southern Lakes Sanctuary team is now trialling data collection using SMART collect with ski patrollers who have volunteered to record alpine birds and invasive plants and animals.

Very cool! Please do let us know how the trial goes, would love to hear how they get on with Collect

Hi Lisa,
For Mount Kenya Trust we’ve given our tree monitors SMART with patrol package, we have designed configurable model to capture the number of tree seedlings transported, how many were destroyed per trip the number of seedling per species as we are interested to plant indigenous tree species and what other activities have been carried out in-terms of land preparation and whether we’re planting in a TELIS or Enrichment sites. We have also added different daily activities including Supervision, Mapping, monitoring. As I have said this we configured as a patrol package and hence cannot evaluate survival rate but can still see what work was done as part of rehabilitation project.
Enock

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Thank you for sharing, Enock. That sounds like a great project. I have a couple of questions. Are you recording survivorship etc after planting on a different platform? Are you taking locations of the planting of individual trees or the location of a broader area of planting? The site I’m working with would like to capture information to a very specific location - per planting stand (about 1mX1m and these ‘stands’ are max 2m apart). The signal coverage in their area is poor and I’m concerned about accuracy of locations for the data associated with each stand.

Hi Lisa,
Sorry for late response, I was away from the office we take broader location of planting site. Quite diffficult for individual plant/seedling as the areas are as big as 200Ha with several plots. We take statistics on seedling transportation how many are delivered, number per species those damaged during transportation etc etc