Sweden

In June I'll be flying to Sweden to film brown bears! Although this sounds very thrilling I was at first horrified at the thought of tracking brown bears in the Swedish wilderness. Fortunately I found that this will be a much milder experience. The bears are living in 2-3 ha enclosure in the Orsa Zoo and I can film the bears from a raised walkway.

You may be asking why the hell am I filming bears? This does in fact relate to my MSc in Geomatics. My supervisor, Dr Hunter, was involved in developing tracking collars for grizzly bears in the Alberta Rockies. These collars are equipped with GPS, Inertial Navigation System (which measure acceleration) and a camera. The problem is that interpreting this data is not so easy. What do all the numbers mean? That's where I come in... I will develop statistical algorithms that interpret this collection of data. But to do this I need to know what the data is actually measuring, i.e. what does a bear actually do? How does it move when doing these things? The brown bears in the zoo will be collared and my film will be precisely time-coordinated with the collar measurements.

It's going to be great. I don't know whether it will be that thrilling to film bears all day for 2 weeks. In one way, I think it will be fantastic to study the behavior of these highly intelligent creatures, but zoo animals are known for being lazy. Let's hope the lovely long sunny days of summer will keep them awake!