Proceedings of the 1st Australian and New Zealand Spatially Enabled Livestock Management Symposium

Abstract

Spatial monitoring of livestock and their environment has been a rapidly expanding area of research in Australia, New Zealand and around the world over the past few years. Furthermore, systems for commercial deployment are currently being developed to enable producers to make use of this technology. It's an exciting time to be a researcher; however we need to be aware of the many challenges we face if these technologies are to be successfully adopted by industry. Communication between technology developers, researchers, funding bodies and producers is fundamental to ensuring a coordinated approach to research and to ensure practical outcomes for industry. This is one of the primary functions of this symposium, bringing together all these parties to share knowledge and build working relationships! This symposium has a diverse range of speakers and, as a direct consequence of discussions from last year's GPS Livestock Tracking Forum, keynote speaker Toby Patterson will provide insights into animal movement and behavioural modelling in ecology, an allied research area from which the livestock industry can learn a great deal. So whether you are a researcher intent on using the technology to understand the mysteries of plant and animal interactions, or a producer just wanting to know where your cows are, we hope you will glean something useful from the event!