Biodiversity is essential to human well-being, but people have been reducing biodiversity throughout human history. Loss of species and degradation of ecosystems are likely to further accelerate in the coming years. Our understanding of this crisis is now clear, and world leaders have pledged to avert it. Nonetheless, global goals to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss have mostly not been achieved. However, many examples of conservation success show that losses can be halted and even reversed. Building on these lessons to turn the tide of biodiversity loss will require bold and innovative action to transform historical relationships between human populations and nature.

Digital data are accumulating at unprecedented rates. These contain a lot of information about the natural world, some of which can be used to answer key ecological questions. Here, we introduce iEcology (i.e., internet ecology), an emerging research approach that uses diverse online data sources and methods to generate insights about species distribution over space and time, interactions and dynamics of organisms and their environment, and anthropogenic impacts. We review iEcology data sources and methods, and provide examples of potential research applications. We also outline approaches to reduce potential biases and improve reliability and applicability. As technologies and expertise improve, and costs diminish, iEcology will become an increasingly important means to gain novel insights into the natural world. Information Age, Big Data, and iEcologyThe information age is characterized by rapid accumulation of myriad types of digital data [1]. Central to this revolution is the Internet, which is a source of unprecedented amounts of diverse and readily accessible data, via webpages, social media, and various other data platforms. These data are constantly created and stored in the digital realm and form an omnipresent part of the modern world. They also provide novel opportunities for research that the scientific community is only beginning to explore. Here, we describe an emerging research approach -iEcology (i.e., internet ecology), which we define as the study of ecological patterns and processes using online data generated for other purposes and stored digitally (Figure 1). These data can be used to address fundamental ecological questions and to analyze ecological processes at a range of spatiotemporal scales and across a diverse range of contexts. As such, iEcology has the potential to provide new understandings of ecological dynamics and mechanisms, complementing more traditional methods of obtaining ecological data.While iEcology can be considered to fit within the wider scope of ecological informatics (see Glossary), it is distinct from other uses of Big Data sources in the biological sciences in that data are not specifically and intentionally generated to address ecological and environmental questions [2][3][4]. Moreover, iEcology expands on the traditional scope of ecological informatics with new data sources and dedicated methods to analyze them. iEcology is predominantly focused on collecting, collating, and exploring data generated online by human society, either passively or unintentionally (e.g., Internet search activity, social media interactions, and uploaded data and media), a process also referred to as passive crowdsourcing [5]. iEcology uses digital methods to access, handle, and analyze these data, in a manner akin to techniques from other research fields such as sociology, culture and media studies, biomedical sciences, computer sciences, and economics [6,7]. iEcology also shares part of its toolbox with conservation culturomicsan emerging research area in conservation science [8-10]alb...

Strategies for 21st-century environmental management and conservation under global change require a strong understanding of the biological mechanisms that mediate responses to climate- and human-driven change to successfully mitigate range contractions, extinctions, and the degradation of ecosystem services. Biodiversity responses to past rapid warming events can be followed in situ and over extended periods, using cross-disciplinary approaches that provide cost-effective and scalable information for species’ conservation and the maintenance of resilient ecosystems in many bioregions. Beyond the intrinsic knowledge gain such integrative research will increasingly provide the context, tools, and relevant case studies to assist in mitigating climate-driven biodiversity losses in the 21st century and beyond.

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