Space: The final frontier for everything

The title is inspired by an article by Kareiva(1994), rather than Captain Kirk's famous monologue from Star Trek. Although, unlike the article, I am not just referring to "spatial complications" in ecological theory but also to the role of technology that's launched into space to continuously send back data of our home planet.

Ecology is everything around us. It's organised and distributed, organic and sequential and everything we do has consequences. Time and again nature has proved itself to be resilient but if you study the current trends of heatwaves, wildfires, cyclones and other disasters, you will realise that it's getting harder for it to keep up. Researchers have warned of this impending doom and are working on ways to prepare for such disasters. However, it's important to bridge the gap between scientific rigour and the practical application of technology to solve real-world problems. Spatial and temporal changes need to be analysed to predict and model our future.

I love nothing more than walking along a forest path armed with my camera looking at birds, insects or some ephemeral monsoon blossoms. What I have always found interesting is how everything is connected, like the birds that converge at a fruiting fig tree or rocks that remain bare only to burst into colour in the monsoons. Observing these events, I have always wanted to know how they transform across seasons and in many cases across decades like mangroves that seem to rhythmically grow and recede. Whether it is mapping the changing mangrove ecosystems, surveying bat roosts for delineating critical habitats or observing ephemeral monsoon flora, ecological theory and geospatial analysis that is important to understand these. Being a self-taught spatial ecologist and guiding researchers and consultants in this domain, I have picked up some skills that I am eager to apply and share.

Enter spatialecologist.org.

Watch this space for more...