Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 21/01/2026This work showed patterns of heatshock causing discolouration that can be identified by multispectral sensors (Sentinel-2) and used this to show shock then recovery of a known seagrass bed in Quiberon France before during and after a Heatwave. Check out the full paper here: doi.org/10.1016/j.rs... 050
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 21/01/2026When intertidal Seagrass experiences heat shock, it can cause discolouration to the leaves. We often use colour of vegetation to assess percentage cover of leaves from optical remote sensing, so understanding heatwave effects to colouration is highly important for our estimates of seagrass cover! 130
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 21/01/2026🚨🚨 New Intertidal Seagrass Paper Alert🚨 🚨 This time led by Simon Oiry who utilised a compination of laboratory 👨🏻🔬 and satelitte 🛰️ experiments to assess the effects of Heatwaves on the optical properties of Seagrass and developed the novel (and widely applicable) Seagrass Heat Shock Index! 142
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 04/11/2025We also found some general latitudinal patterns in intertidal seagrass, with the proportion of the intertidal area covered by seagrass increasing as you go south, and not only that, the cover/density of that seagrass tends to increase the further south you go. 100
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 04/11/2025From this total area we found hotspots of intertidal seagrass across the whole of Europe, with three notable hotspots coming out as the biggest in the North Frisian Wadden Sea (Germany), Arcachon Bay (France) and Ria Formosa (Portugal). 100
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 04/11/2025Then using a cloud-computing approach we classified the over 15,100 km ² of intertidal area in Europe, finding an area larger than both Paris and Lisbon combined appeared to be seagrass at over 50 % cover (212 +/- 18.8 km ²) 100
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 04/11/2025By updating the ICE CREAMS model, we improved its accuracy from 82 % in previous work to 91 % by decreased its’ false positive rate on over 60,000 independent and openly accessible validation data. 100
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 04/11/20255) lead a Call-to-Action for the availability of data following the FAIR principles to improve future iterations of this European scale map. Through this work we feel we successfully achieved all of the first four aims and hope that this paper will achieve the fifth: a Call-to-Action! 100
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 04/11/20252) use ICE CREAMS to create a contemporary map of Intertidal Seagrass for Europe 3) provide a robust and scalable methodology to allow others to map intertidal seagrass at large scales 4) provide an open-access and hopefully easy to use tool to view this map 100
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 04/11/2025We aimed to do this by using products or data that were openly available and consistent across Europe from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery, the Google Earth Engine cloud-computing used to sort this imagery, the ICE CREAMS model used to classify the imagery even down to the outputs themselves. 100
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 22/07/2025Have spent an amazing time these last few weeks as Benthic Taxonomist on the RV Tarajoq as part of their annual surveys of the Greenlandic 🇬🇱 Shrimp and Cod! It is always such a privilege and always reminds me how much I love being at sea 082
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 13/02/2025Counting Walruses from space? #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int using commercially available Very High resolution satellite data with citizen science and validation with in situ drone data 071
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 13/02/2025Genetics from space?? #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int Genetics, of course, not possible to be sampled from Satellite observations 🛰️ but habitats can be defined and mapped 020
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 13/02/2025Now moving into the open ocean for modelling but considering local structure #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int work from the same lab (MARBEC @umontpellier.bsky.social) using image Convulutional neural networks to model fish 🐟 distributions 030
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 13/02/2025Now we move onto Habitat Suitability and Species Distribution Modelling #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int here work at MARBEC lab using Neural Network transfer learning to predict abundance of Fish Species 040
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 13/02/2025How depressing: 250 companies causing 73% of Ecosystem Damage globally #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int 094
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 13/02/2025Todays keynotes discussing Earth Observation for sustainability #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int Nature Positive and Economics of Conservation 062
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 12/02/2025Victoire Martinez setting up the workshop on Marine Biodiversity from space #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int what are the specific needs to fulfil our science and policy needs 030
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 12/02/2025The final talk of the Coastal Ecosystem is coming back to Seagrasses in the intertidal area, but specifically impacts of Marine and Terrestrial Heatwaves #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int using combinations of experimental assessments of seagrass with Satellite Remote Sensing 🛰️ 010
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 12/02/2025The Coastal Ecosystem session is moving a little bit further from the coast now: but not too far! #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int the first kelp forest assessment across British Columbia, Canada 010
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 12/02/2025Time to ‘get our feet wet’ in the Marine Ecosystem session #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int here discussing plankton communities around Florida 030
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 12/02/2025Today’s keynote discusses how None Government Organisations and Civil Societies can aid and influence Government strategies, guidelines and even laws using informative Remote Sensing to maximise conservation #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int 🛰️ 031
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 11/02/2025Now we move on to foundational models for modelling soil biodiversity in comparison to tabular data 📊 🛰️ #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int so quick summary is: foundational modelling performs worse than high quality tabular data but could be a good alternative when in situ data are lacking 020
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 11/02/2025The session continues looking at biodiversity monitoring across different realms: terrestrial, coastal and marine #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int 010
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 11/02/2025Now it’s on to habitat mapping with Earth Observation #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int Current available data are lacking for model training, testing and validation, but perhaps more importantly there is a lack of consistency in model protocols 🧪 📊 🛰️ 030
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 11/02/2025Kicking off this morning is the discussion of what is coming next in Satellite 🛰️ #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int will any of the new satellites be a Swiss Army knife, one satellite fits all?! Spoilers: No 021
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 10/02/2025How will we know if the curve of biodiversity loss is bending back towards sustainable goals? #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int Monitor Monitor Monitor at spatial and temporal scales that are essential for policy makers 🛰️🧪 0100
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 10/02/2025Straight to the necessity of this research #BIOSPACE25 @esa.int can we better inform and collaborate with all researchers in the field of biodiversity monitoring? 092
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 10/02/2025Kicking off the #BioSpace conference at @esa.int! 5 days of Satellite 🛰️ Biodiversity monitoring and assessment! 050
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 09/02/2025In Rome this week for the #BioSpace conference at @esa.int 🛰️ stay tuned for spacey science 🌱 🌊 🗺️ 080
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 05/12/2024Maybe not best known nor cited but one I’m very proud of is our phenology of Intertidal Seagrass, where we used the archive of open-access Sentinel-2 imagery to describe European scale differences in Seagrass bed dynamics over time! First use of ICE CREAMS 🍦 🧪 🌱 🗺️ 🌍 www.nature.com/articles/s43... 0212
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 21/11/2024Quite a pleasant summary of my main topics 😊 scholargoggler.com 040
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 18/11/2024Then using the ICE CREAMS to assess seagrass phenology and show that there are clear latitudinal patterns across the continental scale of Europe www.nature.com/articles/s43... 030
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 18/11/2024To then developing a satellite derived Neural Network algorithm: The Intertidal Classification of Europe: Categorising Reflectance of Emerged Areas of Marine vegetation with Sentinel-2 (ICE CREAMS) to assess changes in intertidal seagrass over time www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 140
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 18/11/2024Then I moved to Nantes in France 🇫🇷 working on 🛰️ remote sensing with satellites and drones to assess intertidal habitats! Here trying to start from spectral analysis of Seagrass habitats to show that satellites can distinguish them from other habitats www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 110
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 18/11/2024From Lyme Bay MPA I moved on to habitat assessments: looking at the carbon stock found in marine habitats around one of the channel islands: Jersey 🇯🇪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 110
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 18/11/2024We saw the effect of the MPA on the benthic ecosystem through underwater surveys, with increases in taxonomic diversity, functional diversity and acoustic diversity publicationslist.org/data/m.j.wit... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1... besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... 121
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 18/11/2024I started off at the University of Plymouth with a PhD assessing the effect of a Marine Protected Area #MPA in the UK 🇬🇧! I joined the aMER team who had been studying Lyme Bay MPA and published a series of papers showing the ecosystem and biodiversity effect of the MPA 120
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 08/11/2024Hello 👋! I’m Bede and I work on using novel and traditional tools to monitor natural systems, applying appropriate analysis to best inform management! Basically 🛰️ 🌱 🐟 + stats and coding! 0111
Dr. Bede Ffinian Rowe Davies @bedeffinian.bsky.social · 25/10/2024New paper, led by Alejandro Román looking at the association of insitu measured chlorophyll and remote sensing derived proxies of chlorophyll at extremely high spatial resolution! Go check it out: doi.org/10.1016/j.sc... 010