Hakim Abdi
Nomination for WWF's "Environmental Hero" award

In mid-September I got an email that said “ditt arbete med Birding Therapy som en av de nominerade av Årets Miljöhjälte i kategorin biologisk mångfald” (your work with Birding Therapy is one of the nominees for this year’s Environmental Hero award in the biodiversity category"). At first I didn’t know what to think and thought it was a phishing/malware type of spam. But then it sunk in that this is real, and it’s difficult to put into words how I felt. I didn’t think that anyone was paying attention to the small side project I started to get more people, particularly underrepresented groups, out into nature and birding.

Hakim Abdi
TEDx talk on “Satellites for Everyone”

My TEDx talk is now available on YouTube. The basic premise of the talk is that when you put all the recent advances in perspective, it results in a democratization of data on one hand, and science on the other. It means that anyone with a computer and a decent internet connection can have access to satellite data, process them using open source methods and extract information for their own use. This not only helps accelerate the rate at which scientific discoveries are made but also makes knowledge sharing and international development more equitable and inclusive.

Early Career

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Behind the Paper: Satellite remote sensing and landscape metrics to characterize IBAs and aid the conservation of migratory birds

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The conservation of species within Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) is critical, particularly in regions like Tunisia where wetlands serve as vital habitats for a wide array of waterbird species, including several that are globally threatened. In our recently published study on the conservation of wintering waterbirds within IBAs in Tunisia, we leveraged cutting-edge satellite remote sensing techniques to unravel the intricate dynamics between landscape structure and waterbird communities. This research is particularly novel as it integrates remote sensing data to assess the influence of wetland characteristics and surrounding landscape composition on bird habitats.

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How we “observe” biodiversity from space

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Biodiversity is a complex term but it essentially encompasses life in all its variety, ranging from individual genes to entire ecosystems. The legendary biologist Edward O. Wilson defines biodiversity as “the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth”. The loss of biodiversity due to human activities and its negative effect on ecosystems are well documented.

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New milestone: My paper is now the most read and cited

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This is an exciting milestone for me. As of December 13th, my open access study on the Land cover and land use classification performance of machine learning algorithms in a boreal landscape using Sentinel-2 data that was published in 2020 is the most read (22,885) and most cited (101) paper in the journal GIScience & Remote Sensing.