Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

See Something Fishy? Report it!

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Image Credit: Aqua Invaders

Project: http://www.brc.ac.uk/aquainvaders/home

You can now contribute to science no matter who you are or where you are thanks to this amazing new citizen science project by Aqua Invaders.

Aqua Invaders is a unique partnership between prominent Environmental Science agencies, who have come together to collect much needed data on new aquatic species emerging across waterbodies in the UK.

The initiative’s main aim is to identify and locate invasive, non-native freshwater aquatic animal species that might have brought significant problems with them for our indigenous wildlife. Regular surveillance of each and every waterbody in UK is physically impossible and this is where Aqua Invaders requires the help of citizen scientists like you. You can now report occurrences of such unusual sightings in waterbodies around you, using Aqua Invader’s new mobile application.

The “Aqua Invaders” app is free for download and is available for both iOS and Android mobile platforms. The application will help you identify the specie of your sighting and will enable you to submit geo-located pictures. So, as soon as you see something fishy (pun intended) around you, just grab your phone, snap away and submit your sighting in a jiffy. The app itself features 26 species which includes 12 fish, 7 crustaceans (including the dreaded “Killer Shrimp”), a handful of exotic amphibians and also Zebra Mussel, Red-eared Terrapin and American Mink. Each species has its own information page and photo galleries to help you correctly identify your sighting.

The application is intuitive and is very easy to use. You can create a “New Sighting” straight away from the homepage which will trigger open your camera. Once you have snapped away the incidence, you will be taken to the “New Sighting” page, where you are required to enter necessary details. You can also open up the ID guide from the “New Sighting” page as well – to roughly identify your sighting. Once all the details are complete, just hit the submit button and you are good to go. You can also add previously captured pictures from your gallery when creating a new report. The data collected from this app will be submitted to Biological Records Centre (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology), where experts will verify your sighting and relevant authorities will then be alerted straight away to resolve the situation. Upon verification, your report will be made available to the NBN Gateway.

Obtaining accurate data about distribution of invasive species is highly important when it comes to formulating a response. Data provision prior to this has always been unreliable, patchy and often unverified due to lack of accurate geographical coordinates, but these shortcomings have been addressed by this application, which by the power of you all citizen scientists will help the initiative to identify such occurrences like never before.

Earthworms and … climate change?

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As any gardener will tell you, earthworms are good for your garden. However, that same ability to compost organic material into rich, black soil in your backyard may actually be having a detrimental impact on some forests, and in turn, carbon storage.

Earthworms, you see, are not native to the province of Alberta in Canada. Indeed, apparently most of Canada’s native earthworms died out during the last ice age; the worms you see today are likely invasive species that somehow made their way across the ocean with European immigrants. Earthworms eat will eat copious amounts of leaf litter on the forest floor, and this speeds up soil decomposition. It’s not yet clear how this affects the growth cycles of trees, forest plants, and the birds, mammals and invertebrates that live in forests where worms have not been found before.

So how does climate change come into it? Leaf litter, as it accumulates in forest soil, works like a carbon dioxide bank, storing it underground. So scientists now want to know if earthworms reduce carbon storage, and if so by how much? Initial research by Dr. Erin Cameron suggests that it might be as much as a 37% decrease; this could have a significant impact on climate change.

Given this data, the Alberta Worm Invasion Project has a mandate to slow the spread of earthworms in Alberta. As you might suspect, human activity is still a major cause of accelerated earthworm spread, as worm eggs can cling to car tires, and fishers tend to dump their bait at the end of a day out fishing. The project has a public awareness campaign going to help reduce the impact of human activity.

On the citizen science side, the Worm Invasion Project wants your help to track the spread of earthworms in Alberta. The Worm Tracker is an iOS app that allows you to track where and when you find earthworms in the province. There’s a field guide to help you identify species, and you can use Google Earth to explore some of the data.

Photo by sippakorn yamkasikorn on Unsplash

The Asian longhorned beetle and you

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If you own a pool, you know that keeping the water clean and free of leaves and insects is an ongoing battle. The good news is that if you live in New York state you can turn that chore into data for science.

The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation wants you to keep tabs on the Asian longhorned beetle by monitoring your pool filter for the little critters. The DEC wants you to check your filter at least weekly from now until August 30, and if you find one (or more), snap a picture and email it to foresthealth@gw.dec.state.ny.us. Once you’ve sent the picture in, you’re asked to put the bug(s) in a container in the freezer until you receive instructions to either discard the container or send it to the DEC.

The Asian longhorned beetle is an exotic “invasive species,” and a major infestation may well devastate the local tree cover. With everyone involved in looking for the beetle, there is a better chance of finding new infestations early, which in turn will allow the DEC to implement control measures more quickly.

Don’t have a pool? No problem; the DEC still wants to hear from you if you think you’ve found some.

For more information on the Asian longhorned beetle, check out the ALB page here

Image courtesy of Wikimedia