Habitat for Bees
Pollinators Pavilion, photo by Lily Landes
pollinators pavilion
Pollinator decline poses a major threat to the global agricultural food supply; yet while honeybee decline is well documented, 90 percent of the planet's bees are native bees, responsible for 75 percent of non-agricultural pollination globally. Honeyless, hiveless, and stingerless, these primary pollinators provide a vital ecosystem service yet remain poorly understood; their discreet dwelling and diversity make them hard to identify. Designed by Ariane Lourie Harrison, The Pollinators Pavilion addresses this gap by bringing architecture, machine learning technology, and conservation ecology together to prototype an analogous habitat / field station with an embedded monitoring system using machine learning to automate insect identification of solitary bees.
Various species of bees in the genus Osmia, commonly known as mason bees, are among the types of pollinators that may nest in the Pavilion. Images sourced from USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Program.
These thorns evolved in our work to become the repository of monitoring equipment. You see here the blue glow of an endoscopic camera and microprocessor trained over nesting tubes.
Monitoring systems, utilizing AI for Earth, capture images/data about bees who live in the habitat.
The Axonometric of the wood structure integrates this technology : solar panel on the roof; storage battery housed underneath, wiring down to panels: microprocessors, beam break sensors and camera.