Your Research!

A studio is a place where you study! The studio, though, is not just for students! The Sidmouth Nature 'STUDIO' not only provides a way for people to study the nature of Sidmouth in more depth but also enables someone to ask just one specific question.

Whilst much of the information in this website is provided through its primary 'themes' that, in itself, is insufficient to be really useful. To support the main purposes of the website the STUDIO enables the user to break free from the organised theme/topic/thread/text structure and ask questions that span more than one theme or use information that was used to create the website material but not specifically incorporated into the texts themselves.

The STUDIO utilises a 'shared' source created within the Google app NotebookLM but requires no login or account details and is free to use.

The STUDIO is simply an AI based question and answer facility.

The 'Knowledge Base' contains all the base knowledge contained within this website whgich includes:

• All the primary textual information contained within the topics covered in the main website

• Descriptive texts of over 800 animal and plant species recorded within the Sidmouth area

• Information texts about the 48 sites if natural interest that were surveyed in the Sidmouth Nature project

• Observation records of species from sites over a three year period

• Additional papers and texts that are freely available for use from other sources

Once in the studio you will see the 'chat' page. Simply type in your question, press go, and wait for your answer! You can save the answer as a 'note' and you can ask follow-up questions.

Examples:

• What was the yellow flower with four petals I saw in Muttersmoor today?

• Where can I see Wood White butterflies?

• When is the best time to see bluebells?

These are pretty basic questions but likely to be most typically used by casual users but more complex questions are quite valid too:

• What invasive species of animals occur, where do they occur and what is being done about them?

• What is the primary cause of the cliff falls in Sidmouth and what is being done to stop them?

• What are the most common types of lichen found on tombstones?

You could ask any AI 'chat bot' these questions but by asking our 'studio' these answers will be specifically focused on the Sidmouth area and so, potentially of far more interest to Sidmouth people.

A more advance use of the studio is extracting lists and analysing the database of records collected from site surveys. For example try a prompt like this: "Create a list of all grass species found on sites designated as woodland. Provide the common name, specific name, the site and the month when the population index is the highest for that species".

For the best results, rather than use the 'chat' function click on the pencil symbol next to the 'Data Table' tab and enter your prompt into the available box. This a more complex process and the range of options is immense so click the 'Observations Analysis' link above to get a fuller description of this function and how to use it.