Overview

• The museum activated 25 environmental sensors across the Nature Discovery Garden at its South Kensington site.
• The network captures temperature and humidity variations, underwater pond acoustics, insect wing hum, bird calls, and urban noise.
• All streams feed a new Data Ecosystem built on AWS that enables secure storage, processing, and rapid sharing of biodiversity data, with usage up 200% in the past 15 months.
• Researchers will merge the live feeds with community-science submissions, environmental DNA, and historical observations dating to 1995, including input from more than 96,000 participants in a noise pollution study on insects.
• Museum scientists describe the gardens as a living laboratory designed to generate evidence for science-led urban nature recovery.