About Us
Who are we?
The Global Biosphere Sensing Network is an initiative supported by the Horizons Institute at the University of Leeds to build an interdisciplinary network of researchers to tackle these issues.
The network seeks to build on existing research strengths by connecting researchers to support novel interdisciplinary funding bids, develop doctoral training initiatives, and to enhance the impact and reach of their work with outside stakeholders and end users.
The Need for This Network
In the face of global challenges such as reversing biodiversity loss, combating emerging diseases, and ensuring agricultural sustainability, our planetary biosphere is undergoing unprecedented change.
At the same time, there is a revolution in our ability to observe and monitor this change through new sensing technologies, automation, and artificial intelligence.
These developments bring enormous opportunities to generate the information needed to make informed policy choices but also raise crucial questions around privacy, equitable access to data, and the global politics of widespread, automated data collection.
To capitalise on these opportunities, face these challenges, and ensure that biosphere sensing is equitable and fair requires working across academic disciplines. We want to link biologists with ethicists, social scientists with engineers, and artists with atmospheric chemists. Only with these links will we be able to achieve everything we need to.
