Natural History Museum turns on sensors in high-tech gardens to monitor nature

The Natural History Museum has switched on sensors in its gardens to monitor how wildlife reacts to the urban climate, and how and why it is changing.

The 25 sensors installed across the central London site will monitor conditions like temperature, humidity and sound.

Researchers will then be able to use the live data to look at the kind of life that makes these gardens home – from insects and frogs to tiny microscopic organisms invisible to the human eye.

The Natural History Museum opened the £25 million transformed gardens, complete with a bronze dinosaur, in the five acres wrapping around the South Kensington building last July.

The free-to-visit green space, which aims to support urban nature, scientific research and education, has seen five million visitors so far, the museum said.

The network of sensors was installed in one of the two gardens – the nature discovery garden – to help scientists understand how wildlife interacts with its surroundings, as part of its partnership with global cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The range of live data gathered will include variations to the garden’s microclimate, underwater sound recordings from the pond, the hum of insect wings, bird calls and urban noise, such as traffic.

The data will feed into what the museum calls a pioneering new data system, built using AWS technologies to allow scientists to collect, enrich, and share biodiversity and environmental data quickly.

This stream of information will be vital for understanding how urban nature is changing and what actions can support its recovery, the museum said.

Ed Baker, acoustic biology researcher at the museum, said: “We’re incredibly excited about the switch-on of our new environmental sensor network.

“This marks a major milestone in transforming our gardens into a living laboratory, helping us better understand how urban nature is changing in real time.

“With the support of Amazon Web Services, we’re now able to collect and share data at an unprecedented scale, deepening our understanding of biodiversity and driving forward science-led nature recovery in the UK’s urban spaces.”

As well as the data gathered by the sensors, all data collected through the museum’s community science programmes – which involve researchers working collaboratively with communities and individuals on local areas across the UK – will feed into the data system.

This aims to ensure anyone, anywhere, can contribute to a better understanding of biodiversity in their area, providing evidence that can support action for change and nature recovery.

For example, more than 96,000 people recently got involved in a programme studying how noise pollution affects insects.

Large volumes of historical visual wildlife observations from the Museum’s gardens, collected from 1995 up to the transformed gardens’ opening last year, as well as environmental DNA data, have also been uploaded onto the so-called Data Ecosystem.

Hilary Tam, AWS Europe Middle East and Africa sustainability leader, said: “By building the Data Ecosystem using cloud technology, the Museum’s scientists can securely store and process data from the gardens for the first time.

“This allows the Museum to turn this data into actionable insights to support the UK’s urban nature recovery.

“The scientists can continue deepening their understanding of the UK’s urban diversity by using the cloud to scale up the Data Ecosystem as more data from the gardens is collected over time.”