CSP lead scientist, Dr. Jess Hightower, recently presented new research at the 2026 World Biodiversity Forum in Davos, Switzerland, an event that brought together people across sectors who are all working to halt or reverse biodiversity loss, including scientists, policymakers, and finance professionals. Dr. Hightower shared a high-thoughput, species-explicit modeling approach developed by CSP that combines large-scale earth observation data with in situ species observation data to map biodiversity at fine resolution across regions. The approach–tested with partners in the Great Plains–moves beyond coarse habitat proxies and indirect measures of biodiversity, providing a scalable method to quantify biodiversity patterns using publicly available data, open-source tools, and advanced spatial analytics.
Dr. Hightower’s talk highlighted how this kind of high-resolution, species-explicit modeling can support conservation decisions at scale, from assessing the effectiveness of conservation and restoration efforts, to tracking biodiversity outcomes over space and time, setting targets backed by science, and generating the metrics increasingly required by biodiversity and reporting frameworks. The presentation aligned with a consistent theme throughout the forum, as speakers pointed to the growing need for scalable, transferable tools that give conservation, policy, and finance sectors a common, scientifically grounded, species-explicit metric for assessing biodiversity progress.
