Tenkile Conservation Alliance Gets A New Website!
We've completely rebuilt our website from the ground up, with a concentrated effort on making the experience behind donations and store purchases much easier. We also have a new blog that will cover a variety of topics in an effort to help everyone get a better sense of what goes on in the conservation world - specifically with TCA's efforts
Improved Patrol Routes In PAM
The PAM app is one of our flagship mobile applications that allows staff to take observations of nearly 4,000 different plants, animals, and cultural / spirtual locations. The list of things we track is still growing, too.
With nearly 100,000 observations submitted by staff since its inception, it's been a wildly popular app by everyone who uses it.
Last year, we added the ability to create pre-defined routes that rangers can use to go on a patrol and report what they observe in the rainforest. We also added the ability to setup geofences on demand. When a ranger enters any geofence, a set of instructions on what to do at that location would appear on their screen.
While this technically worked, it wasn't the best approach because mapping platforms aren't the best at showing the finer details in terrain within the Toricelli Mountain Range Conservation Area (TMRCA). For that reason, planting geofences or route points gets tricky.
This month, we decided to take this approach in reverse: a ranger with the appropriate account permissions now has the ability to create a new patrol route directly in the PAM app, and setup geofences along the way in addition to adding any notes about any location. This allows for a significantly higher degree of accuracy both in the route itself and the locations of all geofences.
The Importance Behind Routes
One of the most important things behind data collection is consistency. Routes help to enforce that consistency. Rangers can confidently walk the same path as everyone else. Geofences mark locations where rangers should take observations or perform some other duty. This level of consistency and accuracy allows us to measure change over time, because all observations and other duties are performed in the same places along the same route time after time.
PAM Blitz Coming Soon!
Next week, we'll be doing another PAM blitz involving over 160 staff. They'll be taking observations with a few select individuals testing the new patrol feature.
Feedback will be invaluable, because it'll give us the necessary information to help know what to tweak in the software so that it operates with maximum efficiency.