Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

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There’s an App for …the Amazon

February 28, 2020 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

Guest Post by Vanessa Eyng

The Amazon biodiversity is impressive. Once it comes to fish’s biodiversity, it is even more impressive. The amount of species in the Amazon is huge. The relation between local communities and fishes creates cultural patterns, implies in specifics knowledge and skills, generates income, besides being the fishes the main source of protein for these communities. All this biodiversity is spreed in seven countries and it is connected through water. Rivers, fishes and its migration patterns show us that. Fishes can go from one lake to another, back and forth. And also can go from the river source to the mouth. Some catfishes are responsible for the longest migration known. And to migrate, fishes rely on rivers connectivity. These migration fishes represent around 80% of the commercial fisheries of Amazon. But the data available to understand the fisheries and the migration patterns is not representative for the entire area. The scale of the Amazon represents a specific challenge, even more with a series of major infrastructure projects planned or already implemented in the Amazon.

Citizen science is a growing field, with potential to promote a closer dialogue with citizen demands and concerns, through participatory methodologies. Its approach, developing replicable technologies, could collaborate with large scale monitoring projects, such as the Amazon. And local people participation in conservation projects have been determinant to the success of these strategies, respecting the fact that their livelihood depends on it.

With these approaches, the project Citizen Science for the Amazon put together inhabitants, researchers and students from different parts of the Amazon. All of them with unique environmental knowledge and specific conservation concerns. Through an app, named Ictio, the project goal was to test this new technology, creating a network that could use the data generated in sustainable management and conservation projects. Looking at the big picture, the project seeks to understand how fish migrations work in the Amazon basin and what environmental factors influence these migrations. In combination with the citizen science approach, it helps to fill in information gaps, drastically reduces the cost of gathering this information, and empowers citizens as guardians of their aquatic ecosystems.

The project Citizen Science for the Amazon was implemented in 15 sites, each of them using specific methodologies. The communities were present to app Ictio, used it and discussed the data generated. Three meetings brought together users from different locations, creating a space to share knowledge, discuss conservation strategies and also meet with each other! Until December 2019, 224 users from uploaded 3,092 observation lists, registering 24.000 fishes and 994 tons of fishes! These numbers are from Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, in a scale basin effort without precedents.

The project is worked to develop a network of partners from different countries, https://www.amazoniacienciaciudadana.org/espa%C3%B1ol/socios/ , joining expertise from of civil society organizations, government entities, universities, research centers and foundations, and other collaborative networks.

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This summer, why not use the Beach Conditions Reporting System (BCRS)?

February 24, 2020 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

Image Credit: BCRS screenshot

Guest Post Written by: Aspen Cook, Laboratory Technician, Outreach Specialist, Environmental Health Department, Mote Marine Laboratory, Sarasota, Florida

The Beach Conditions Reporting System, or BCRS, is a website (www.visitbeaches.org) and accompanying mobile app developed by Mote Marine Laboratory. The BCRS currently collects and disperses beach conditions from 37 locations along the gulf coast of Florida; however, Mote is working to expand this system to other areas both in and out of Florida. The BCRS is completely dependent on a network of dedicated volunteers who submit reports twice daily, 5-7 day per week. BCRS reports include parameters such as flag color, water surface temperature, wind speed and direction, surf type, wave height, crowds, debris, etc., as well as parameters for dead fish and respiratory irritation associated with Florida red tide. As the BCRS expands to other locations (particularly areas that do not often experience Florida red tide), new reporting parameters will be added that are more specific to each area. 

The BCRS has become a go-to for locals and tourists alike for checking the conditions at their local beach before making plans or heading out for any activities. The website alone drew over 1,000,000 individual users from around the world and over 4 million total page views during the 2018-2019 Florida red tide bloom. In addition to environmental conditions the BCRS also displays amenities such as picnic tables, playgrounds, barbecue grills, restrooms, etc., truly making it a one-stop-shop for any beachgoer.  

Not only does this program aid the public in making informed decisions that can both protect their health and improve their overall beach experience, the information is shared with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for long term monitoring and potential forecasting efforts. 

If you are interested in viewing BCRS reports, you can find them at www.visitbeaches.org or by downloading the BCRS app:

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.visitbeaches.bcrs.user&hl=en_US

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mote-bcrs-user/id1434866666

 If you live or work on or near a beach or other coastal waterway and are interested in receiving more information about becoming a volunteer reporter for Mote Marine Laboratory’s Beach Conditions Reporting System, please send an email inquiry to acook@mote.org.

Happy beach-going!

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DreamLab for iOS and Android

February 11, 2020 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

Guest post by James Bradley

DreamLab is a volunteer computing app developed by the Vodafone Foundation, in partnership with the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. It uses the idle processing power of smart phones and tablets to speed up cancer research. With the app you can help accelerate cancer genetics and drug research while you sleep. Unlike many other volunteer computing efforts, DreamLab supports Apple iOS devices as well as Android.

Contributing to DreamLab takes only a few simple steps:

  1. Charge your device and connect it to the Internet.
  2. Choose a project or projects to support.
  3. Set the amount of data you want the app to use on Wi-Fi or mobile networks.
  4. Begin powering your projects.

If your mobile network provider is Vodafone UK or Vodafone Australia, the data used by DreamLab is free of charge and does not add to your data limit.

At the present time, there are four projects that can be selected to work on:

  • Demystify by the Garvan Institute
  • DRUGS Phase 3 and Phase 4 by the Imperial College London
  • 3D Genome by AIRC (Italian Association for Cancer Research)

Your contribution to each project and total contribution are tracked through your number of calculations crunched. Your time spent powering DreamLab is tracked as well.

DreamLab can be downloaded for iOS on the App Store and for Android on Google Play:

https://apps.apple.com/app/dreamlab-help-to-fight-cancer/id1273619275

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.vodafone.dreamlabapp

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Swim Guide’s new Photo Submission Tool makes Citizen Science more accessible

September 19, 2018 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

Image Credit: Swim Drink Fish Canada

 

 

This guest post is by Parker Muzzerall, of Swim Drink Fish.

What is Swim Guide?

Created in 2011 by Swim Drink Fish Canada, Swim Guide is an international recreational water quality and beach information service available for free on iOS, Android, and the web. People everywhere have a hard time knowing whether their local waters are clean enough to swim. Swim Guide aims to help answer that question by providing current, reliable, and accessible information on recreational water quality. This helps people everywhere get in, on, or around the water with confidence.

Spanning oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams, Swim Guide has information for nearly 8000 beaches across 7 countries. Swim Guide makes it easy to find your favourite beach or to explore new ones. You get information about the beach, view photos, get directions, report pollution, and learn about historical and current water quality all in one place.

Without reliable and current data about recreational water quality, people are vulnerable to illness and infection. When water isn’t safe to touch people withdraw from it. And when the connection between us and our water fades, so does our instinct to protect it. By empowering people to stay informed about their local waters, they can connect and safeguard them with confidence.

Swim Guide Affiliate Program

Swim Guide is made possible through the Swim Guide Affiliates Program. Comprised of over 80 environmental groups, governmental agencies, universities, and more, the Swim Guide Affiliates program allows groups doing recreational water monitoring to use Swim Guide to share their test results. Many of these groups rely on citizen scientists to help carry out their monitoring programs. These include Savannah Riverkeeper in Georgia, Tijuana Waterkeeper in Baja Mexico, and Waterkeepers Bahamas, to name just a few.

By bringing recreational water quality information from all these incredible groups around world into one place, it makes the data more accessible. It wouldn’t be possible without the help of our global community of citizen scientists.

Swim Guide and Citizen Science

At Swim Drink Fish, citizen science is at the core of what we stand for: connecting people with water. Alongside Swim Guide, many of our other programs, such as Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, Fraser Riverkeeper, North Saskatchewan Riverkeeper, and the Watermark Project, all rely on, and strive to enable, citizen science.

In an effort to increase our citizen science capacity, we have launched a new in-app feature that makes becoming a citizen scientist easier than ever.

The new Swim Guide Photo Submission Tool allows users to submit photos through the Swim Guide App to our new beach image database. Our hope is that over time, this database will serve as a valuable resource for understanding recreational water use and environmental change at thousands of beaches around the world.

Photos are incredibly important pieces of evidence. When Swim Guide users visit the beach they are in a unique position to easily document the environmental conditions around them. By doing this, they are contributing valuable data on recreational water use, pollution, environmental conditions, and more.

How the photo submission feature works

Swim Guide users can submit a photo in two ways through the iOS and the Android app:

  • Click on a beach in the list or on the map in the app. Once on the beach page, click on the photo submission icon (pictured below) and choose “Submit Photos”
  • Click the Add a Photo Icon.
  • Take a photo of your beach, or swim spot.
  • Add details on the report page about what you see, as well as your name and email information.
  • Submit your photo by clicking “send”.

To make our database as valuable as possible, photos must include the water, the shoreline, and document recreational water use as much as possible. By doing this, recreational water users become citizen scientists.

Together we can work towards a future where we can all enjoy the benefits of connecting with water free from worry. We believe citizen science is integral to achieving that.

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