Etiqueta: citizen science

Knowledge

The hidden side of rarity: it’s not that rare being rare

3 de April 2020Francisco Lloret

Begoña García has spent many years passionately studying a curious plant, Borderea chouardii. It is a rare species with a biogeographical origin that dates back to the Tertiary and remains confined to a few limestone cliffs in the Central Pyrenees. Unknown until the middle of the 20th century, it is considered an endangered species. But... is it?

News

Cos4Cloud, a European project to revolutionize the technology of citizen science

9 de March 2020Ángela Justamante

The European Union promotes Cos4Cloud, an ambitious project that will create cutting-edge technology services to improve citizen science platforms. Among other services it will include: integrating observations from different citizen science platforms into a portal, artificial intelligence tools that help citizens recognize species when they send an observation and standardize data from different platforms

News

Citizen science and smart traps against to fight the tiger mosquito

12 de February 2020Àlex Richter-Boix

The MosquitoAlertBCN project has been one of the research initiatives selected by the Pla Barcelona Ciència. It is a project led by CREAF, with the participation of UPF and IRIDEON and the collaboration of the ASPB. The Pla Barcelona Ciència has the support of the Barcelona City Council and the “la Caixa” Bank Foundation. Last Friday, February 7, the seven sectioned research initiatives were published on the 57 that were submitted to the call of the Pla Barcelona Science. Among the selected ones is MosquitoAlertBCN a project led by CREAF, which also involves Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), the IRIDEON technology company and the Barcelona Public Health Agency (ASPB). The event, chaired by the deputy mayor, Joan Subirats and Àngel Font, corporate director of Research and Strategy of the “la Caixa” Foundation, was attended by Frederic Bartumeus, ICREA researcher at CREAF and CEAB-CSIC, specialized in theoretical and computational ecology and John Palmer, professor at UPF, co-creator sociologist at Mosquito Alert, and Mark Richard Williams by IRIDEON, a leading company in the design and manufacture of intelligent mosquito traps. MosquitoAlertBCN will generate a network of citizens and smart traps around the city to monitoring and control in real time the tiger mosquito. The system will be integrated into the current management of mosquitoes that takes place in the city, with the participation of the Public Health Agency of Barcelona (ASPB) in the execution of the project. MosquitoAlertBCN will be a real time monitoring of the tiger mosquito The network of traps and citizens will allow quantifying the quantity and dynamics of tiger mosquito populations in real time, in the city of Barcelona, ​​with unprecedented resolution and precision. The human-mosquito interaction will also be studied, by registering the bites, a very important factor in order to assess the risk of an epidemiological outbreak and improve epidemiological models. The objective of the project is to allow the city to better anticipate the risk of epidemiological outbreaks posed by the tiger mosquito in Barcelona through an open science model that could in the future be transferable to other Spanish and European cities. You can read more details about the project in the Mosquito Alert website.

News

The WeObserve practice communities met in Barcelona to transform citizen observatories

19 de December 2019Àlex Richter-Boix

CREAF, part of the consortium of the project, was the organizer of the event, which took place between November 25 and 27 at the Casa Convalescència in Barcelona, ​​to deepen the challenges is facing the citizen science.

News

Big Mosquito Bytes: new project proposes citizen science and big data as solution against epidemics caused by mosquitoes

31 de October 2019Àlex Richter-Boix

The Big Mosquito Bytes project has been awarded a million euros by the “la Caixa” Banking Foundation. The project will combine citizen science and other massive data sources to develop innovative models that allow predicting the risk of epidemics, as well as visualizing this risk in real time. In the project led by CEAB-CSIC, scientists from UPF, the Max Planck Institute for Demography, the National Center for Epidemiology of ISPCIII and CREAF participate, and it draws heavily on the Mosquito Alert citizen science platform.

News

Citizen science is a data source to fill sustainable development goals

11 de October 2019Ángela Justamante

Monitoring progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires a huge amount of data. Citizen science could help fill important data gaps according to a new study published in  Nature Sustainability. The research, led by IIASA, has involved a large community of citizen science experts from around the world, including Joan Masó, a researcher at CREAF. 

News

CREAF participates in a new COST ACTION to increase understanding of alien species through citizen science

10 de May 2019Anna Ramon Revilla

Bernat Claramunt participates in the COST Action AlienCSI to address multidisciplinary research questions to develop and implement citizen science strategies to increase the scientific understanding of IAS ecology and dynamics, specifically informing decision-makers to implement technical requirements of relevant legislation. 

News

The first citizens’ observatory for monitoring urban butterflies is up and running

22 de February 2019Anna Ramon Revilla

The observatory is the first of its kind in Spain and CREAF is coordinating the team of scientists behind it. They will be working with volunteers to monitor the evolution of butterfly populations in 54 parks and gardens in Barcelona and Madrid.

Knowledge

“With the urban population set to grow by 56% by 2050, we need to make cities greener to protect biodiversity”

4 de May 2018Verónica Couto Antelo

We interviewed Yolanda Melero, holder of a PhD in biology, whose studies have revolved around the behaviour and dynamics of American mink populations. At CREAF she is continuing to investigate how animal populations function, but is now focusing on butterflies to learn about biodiversity-friendly city design.

News

Climate change is causing plants to flower earlier and changing the rhythm of nature

1 de February 2018Anna Ramon Revilla

CREAF and the companies Altran and Starlab have led the design of RitmeNatura.cat, a citizen observatory that encourages members of the public to ‘adopt’ a plant, record the changes it undergoes and provide data that can be used to study the effects of climate change.

News

Citizen science is a useful and reliable tool for studying the mosquitoes driving global epidemics

24 de October 2017Marina Torres Gibert

Acoording to a study published in Nature Communications citizen science has allowed the researchers to cover much more geographic space in comparison to traditional methods, reducing the economic cost of the two-year study eight-fold.

News

CREAF participates in the global initiative GEO WEEK in Washington DC

23 de October 2017Verónica Couto Antelo

The annual meeting of GEO (Group on Earth Observations) will take place between the 23 and 27 of October in Washington DC. There are two sessions organized by CREAF: one centering on citizen science, and the other on future prospects for EuroGEOSS.

News

Pioneering UN backed, citizen led alliance against mosquito borne diseases joins global fight to save 2.7 Million lives every year

9 de May 2017Marina Torres Gibert

Initiative Empowers National Networks, Stakeholders and Governments to Generate and Access Real-time Data and Tools through UN Electronic Platform ‘Environment Live”.

Knowledge

“You only really understand your research if you are able to explain it to a child.”

30 de March 2017Verónica Couto Antelo

Corina Basnou is a postdoctoral biologist working at CREAF since 2005. Currently, she is studying the topics of ecosystem service and biodiversity. 

News

Citizen science emerges as a significant ally to biodiversity

16 de January 2017Albert Naya i Díaz

A new study with the participation of Bernat Claramunt, UAB and CREAF researcher, underscores the great potential of citizen science for conservation.

News

Europe evaluates its citizen science and biodiversity projects

19 de October 2016Verónica Couto Antelo

ALTER-Net, the network of European experts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, has published a review article on citizen science and learning in the journal Conservation Biology. The authors stress that in order for participative projects to reach their potential scientists should become more involved and not remain the background.

News

Mosquito Alert is presented in the European Parliament

26 de September 2016Verónica Couto Antelo

Citizen Science is increasingly gaining importance, and that is why, on September 7, various projects related to it were presented in the European Parliament. Among them, Mosquito Alert appeared and its impact on Spain.

News

Meet Natusfera: a new virtual platform which will connect nature lovers from all over Europe

22 de June 2016Anna Ramon Revilla

Created by CREAF and GBIF.ES, Natusfera consists of a web portal and application for mobile devices which will host information about living beings observed in nature including photo sharing and location. The European Citizen Science Association considers Natusfera to be a benchmark model for initiatives of this type, and has proposed that it be translated into as many languages as possible.  

News

AtrapaelTigre is now Mosquito Alert: a citizen platform for studying and controlling the mosquitos that transmit global epidemics

4 de March 2016Anna Ramon Revilla

This new program updates the project previously known as AtrapaelTigre, and includes the mosquito Aedes aegypti which is responsible for the spread of Zika virus. The updated project will implement an early warning system based on citizen science for the detection of the mosquito’s possible arrival to Spain. Also, monitoring of the presence and spread of the tiger mosquito will be expanded with the objective that the data be incorporated into Spanish systems of public health management and epidemiological research.

News

#FenoDato seeks citizens to help monitor how climate change is altering nature’s rhythm

19 de January 2016Anna Ramon Revilla

Climate experts, botanists, geographers and ecologists from CREAF and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) will train citizens to monitor seasonal changes which can be observed in nature. This way citizens will be able to help the scientists study the effects of climate change on animals and plants. Flower emergence, the dropping of leaves, or the arrival of certain birds will be some of the changes to be studied. Once trained, citizens will be able to contribute to European and Spanish phenology observation networks.

News

Scientists and Catalonian National Police collaborate to catch tiger mosquito stowaways in private vehicles

18 de August 2015Anna Ramon Revilla

The BaixLlobregat Mosquito Control Service is carrying out vehicle searches in coordination with the Mossos de Esquadra (Catalonian National Police) as part of the Atrapaeltigre.com project led by a team from CEAB-CSIC and CREAF. According to 2014 citizen data collected using the app Tigatrapp, this summer Spanish may have transported as many 800,000 tiger mosquitos in their vehicles.

News

The City of Barcelona uses Tigatrapp, a mobile device application for tracking and preventing spread of the tiger mosquito

27 de July 2015CREAF

AtrapaelTigre.com is a citizen science project promoting active collaboration of citizens by way of its app, Tigatrapp. The initiative originated in Catalonia and is capable of managing information from thousands of tiger mosquito breeding sites.

News

GEOSS users matter: an idea born out of the GeoViQua project wins the first call of MYGEOSS Project

30 de June 2015Anna Ramon Revilla

The European project MYGEOSS awards an innovative idea of creating the MYGEOSS Feedback app submitted by 52North and S&T Corp to the First Call for Innovative Apps. This smart App is part of the outreach results of GeoViQua, a European project lead by CREAF during 2012 to 2014.  

News

Citizens and scientists propose actions to face global change in Tordera

19 de June 2015Anna Ramon Revilla

A diverse group of stakeholders took part in a dynamic workshop to evaluate the best options to manage water in the Tordera River Basin in a more sustainable and adaptive way. The 17 participants included researchers, managers, farmers and other citizens who live and work in the Basin. The meeting took place in Santa Maria de Palautordera on 17 June 2015. Key options identified included adaptive forest management, the implementation of environmental flows and better citizen participation spaces. 

Media

An experience: the battle against the tiger mosquito

21 de October 2014CREAF

Aitana Oltra explain at Barcelona Metròpolis the project Atrapaeltigre.com a project of the ICREA-Movement Ecology Laboratory  CEAB-CSIC/ CREAF.

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