Tech Is Finally Learning How to Help Save the Planet

Scientists and engineers are building new tools — and a new way of thinking — to protect the natural world: Conservation technology is on the rise

Photos: Courtesy of author

“We’ve never seen this before,” Roland Knapp said from behind his head-mounted screen display. “There’s an aggregation of at least 300 tadpoles here, depth of four meters, temperature is four degrees Celsius.”

We couldn’t see what was on his screen. Our view was the vast, snow-covered expanse of backcountry Yosemite, but we could feel Knapp’s excitement. Ericka Hegeman, one of the researchers associated with the Mountain Lakes Research Group based at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory (SNARL), busily took notes on everything Knapp said as he piloted his Sofar Trident underwater drone beneath the ice of the mountain lake buried before us, just starting to show signs of the spring thaw.

Conservationists are turning to emerging technologies to understand and intervene in the ecosystems they’re trying to monitor and protect, and vice versa.

Knapp, a research biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team…