We observe and remember the trees around us better than we think. Using our observations and memory, with some knowledge of the structure of plants, tree identification becomes lesser intimidating.

For ease of studying them, plants are categorized into ‘Families’. Each family has a set of defining features. Learning these features helps us narrow down the options when identifying a tree.

In this workshop, we shall learn what to look for in a tree, how to describe what we see and identify characters of some common plant families. We will also introduce the ‘SeasonWatch’ method of observing trees to contribute to the climate change study.

With this workshop, we hope to support your curiosity for trees, cut some edge off plant identification and give you some tools to observe the trees around you.

Students of conservation, through the process of their work, will inevitably come to interact with rural, coastal and forest dwelling people among others. Given this, in a conservation landscape where complex power dynamics play out and have a determining effect on conservation outcomes, where would a researcher and a field worker place herself or himself? Would it be possible for researchers and field workers to balance unequal power dynamics in the process of designing interventions and data collection?

The intention of this workshop is to focus on field work and research as a process of co-creation, where everyone is a participant. Through a series of immersive approaches to understanding participation, our goal is to promote a collaborative and respectful way of working in the field of conservation. The workshop will cover key perspectives to research and practice that can form the foundation for students to reflect on their approach to field work.

The workshop will introduce participants to steps on how to begin/ sustain an alternative livelihood project. Participants will be asked to build their own mock livelihood model keeping in mind their vision, problem they are trying to solve, end customer, sales channel and geography. With this outline we will ask them to intertwine the hard issues one faces when working with communities and scope of bringing about behavioral changes especially in communities facing wildlife conflict. At the end of the workshop one can hope to leave with ideas, possibilities, a flexible outline of a livelihood model and a list of reality checks to start their alternative livelihood model.

Science has immense importance in problem solving, decision making and innovation, but it can often be jargon heavy and inaccessible for the public when limited to research papers and journals. To make it more accessible one can use science communication to inform, educate and raise awareness on science-related topics, especially so when it comes to conservation science. Our workshop will help young researchers look at art and design as tools for communication. Art-based science communication can encourage intuitive thinking, evoke emotional responses, and engage the imagination in ways that prompt behavioural change and action. Similarly, a good design can simplify complex ideas and make them clear and easier for people to understand. Furthermore, an integral part of art-based communication involves collaboration between artists/designers and scientists, which enables for a better transfer of knowledge amongst different groups of people.

Increasingly, scientists and researchers are taking to social media to disseminate their findings. Thus, through our workshop, we will introduce the participants to drawing, illustrations, graphic design and content creation for social media (especially Instagram), which includes elements like observation, storytelling and metaphor-making to help their research reach a larger audience. We will also give an introduction to making quick posters/posts keeping in mind basic design principles.

DNA metabarcoding techniques represent a set of novel molecular tools that can be used for both qualitatively and quantitatively assessing ecological communities. These techniques can be used among the many potential applications. This workshop will introduce the participants to potential application of metabarcoding techniques to wildlife ecologists, which include (and are not limited to) inventorying biodiversity, soil microbial diversity, analysing gut microbiome and/diet, and detecting exotic species in an ecosystem. After attending this introductory workshop, the attendees will be able to (a) understand the concept, potential and limitations of metabarcoding in ecological studies, (b) conceptually learn how to design their metabarcoding projects starting with designing custom primers, (c) learn about the entire metabarcoding workflow including collection of field samples, laboratory processing, library preparation, sequencing and high-throughput sequence filtering procedures, and (d) learn how sequence data is converted into ecological data for further analyses. This being an introductory course will not include hands-on work using analysis pipelines and real datasets.

In academia and even more in conservation and research peer review is very important to provide reliable, credible, and quality information. Evaluation and validation of an article or a paper makes it trustworthy, authentic, and high quality for scientists to refer from. But in this fast-moving world we need everything within a click of a finger, making it easy for the predatory journals to prey on us. The predatory journals are not only devaluating the credibility of scientific research but also is a huge waste of resource.

This workshop will help you get a sneak-peak into the backend working of a peer reviewed journal. It will help you understand the steps your manuscript goes through a team of reviewers and editors to assess the accuracy, methodology, and relevance of work to ensure that your publication meets the standards of other scientific publications. You will get to interact with founder and chief editor of an international peer-reviewed conservation journal and get all your doubts cleared.

This is an introductory workshop on bryophytes. Bryophyte is combined term for Liverworts, Hornworts and Mosses. A lesser known group of plant kingdom. We would like to enlighten the basic studies in bryophytes. We will cover the topics, 1. What is bryophytes 2. How to find bryophytes in nature and 3. Basic taxonomy and identification of bryophytes.

There are only three things an aspiring filmmaker needs to understand before they begin creating their work. This knowledge can make the difference between that work getting watched and shared and creating a desired effect or just brushed aside as yet another film. In this masterclass I will analyse the work of the participants and teach them how to apply these principles to transform an ok film into an exciting watch.

Literature review is an important aspect of conducting research. However, people often struggle with identifying, managing, organizing, synthesizing, and citing references. More than often, there are challenges such as lack of proper research questions, researcher’s bias, and differentiating between relevant and non-relevant literature in the context of the work being done. Concomitantly, early career researchers more than often struggle choosing search terms which are broad enough to capture all articles related to the topic, whilst effectively avoiding irrelevant articles. Therefore, we would like to propose an interactive workshop on the techniques required to conduct an extensive literature review. We hope to delve into the tools and methods i.e, keyword co-occurrence network, using citation managers, continuum of credibility, and reflecting on the importance of curating an accurate bibliography.

We will be doing a hands-on workshop for the latter half of the session, where participants will be exposed to different R packages used for literature reviews. Based on the analysis using package “LitsearchR”, and “Biblioshiny”, participants will use naive search output, and will learn to come up with a supervised search by determining terms linked to each other by virtue of appearing in the same articles, and by assessing the strength of each term.

India is a diverse country with various cultures coexisting together. These interacting cultures are not only limited to the human societies but, with the non-humans as well. The cultures are diverse and possess great historical significance. One way to understand them is by paying attention towards oral traditions, such as folklores, proverbs, anecdotes, songs, plays, dance performances and many more. Since the oral traditions are not standardised and uniform, this calls for an exploratory approach towards integrating linguistics in understanding the cultural diversity and local knowledge. Many anthropologists and linguists have collaborated to acknowledge language as an essential que to the scientific studies. But the approach is a little new to conservation sciences which has been driven by scientific and westernised methodologies. Documenting stories, folklores in conservation sciences shall provide a creative, imaginative platform to inform the world about wonders of science and society and why one should care about them. Stories and folklores can play an important role for understanding the belief systems and emotional connection of the societies with the non-human world. In the rapidly changing landscapes and globalisation, the stories and cultures are getting lost in the fast-paced culture. It is important to incorporate this knowledge in formulating conservation strategies which are inclusive and just.

An introduction to the recording and analysis of sound, produced by biological organisms, or affecting them. We will cover both active and passive acoustic recordings, as well as examples of their applications. Emphasis will be placed also on standard methods to analyze acoustic data, as well as common pitfalls and examples of good practice to use when recording. Finally, discussions will include examples of how this field has contributed to the field of conservation.