The recently formed 'European Open Science Cloud, EOSC’ association incorporates CREAF among its members and other research centers and organizations across Europe.
Creating and validating a methodology to generate citizen science observatories is the common thread of the European project Ground Truth 2.0, which has worked with 4 observatories in Europe (Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden) and 2 in Africa (Kenya and Zambia) in actual operating conditions.
The COVID-19 pandemic has arisen at a time when governments were already reasonably convinced of the need to make their data accessible via open data portals. The need in question is a relatively new phenomenon, one with not only technical but also strategic and economic factors.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Initiative Empowers National Networks, Stakeholders and Governments to Generate and Access Real-time Data and Tools through UN Electronic Platform ‘Environment Live”.
Corina Basnou is a postdoctoral biologist working at CREAF since 2005. Currently, she is studying the topics of ecosystem service and biodiversity.
A new study with the participation of Bernat Claramunt, UAB and CREAF researcher, underscores the great potential of citizen science for conservation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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