Category:Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists

www.ThinBlueLayer.com

Make a Difference with Planet Science, Citizen Action

Visit Planet Citizen News @GreenPolicy360

http://www.planetcitizen.org / http://www.planetcitizens.org

····················································································

Environmental protection

Get Going ! Join in with our "Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists"

Science estimates over half of the world’s oxygen supply is produced by tiny microbes that live in the sea. And researchers sequencing their genomes have turned up some surprising results... "Photosynthetic organisms in the ocean are as important as photosynthetic organisms on earth... The organisms in the ocean are much less impressive than trees in terms of size, but are extremely important to the biosphere."

Tiny marine plants produce a significant fraction of the oxygen we breathe...

Watch the Forests of the Seas & Listen to Philip Glass

TinyBlueGreen

http://www.tinybluegreen.com

https://www.floatingforests.org/

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Planet Citizens | #EarthMonitoring

#Earth360 | GreenPolicy360

#EarthObservations | #EarthScience

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Visit GreenPolicy360's Citizen Science pages

Make a Planet Citizen, Planet Scientist difference

Citizen Science

Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists @GreenPolicy360

"Citizen Science" @Wikipedia

'Going Green'

Citizen Science

Going Green

Climate News

EarthPOV

New Definitions of National Security

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Healthy Lungs Are Good

A 'Best Green Idea'

Atmotube: Portable Air Pollution Monitor

Wearable prototype app to track carbon footprints

○

Aclima air pollution sensors mounted on cars

Google Green Blog -- Make the Invisible Visible by Mapping Air Quality

Aclima-Google-City air quality mapping

"The partnership enables a paradigm-shift in environmental awareness by equipping Street View cars with Aclima’s mobile sensing platform to see the air around us in ways never before possible. Three Street View cars took measurements of nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, particulate matter, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) -- air pollutants which can affect human health or climate change." (from the press release announcement)

Our GreenPolicy360 proposals from 2014/15 have come to be !

Here we are in December 2018 !!

Do You Know What You’re Breathing?

Act to measure the air pollution around you. Make a difference in the air you and your family breathe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/style/air-quality-pollution-monitors.html

As climate change reports become increasingly dire, and as wildfires tear across the American West, and as trust in the federal government’s air quality oversight fades, thousands of people around the country are taking air measurements into their own hands.

Installed on a porch, a console table or hooked to a backpack, these small, sleek and increasingly inexpensive devices measure hyper-local air quality. They are marketed to the discerning and alarmed consumer. Some have begun to self-identify as “breathers.”

The Atmotube and PlumeLab’s Flow are small and meant to be carried around, testing the air as a person walks or bikes, helping people plan routes that avoid bad air. The Awair looks like an old-timey radio and sits on a counter to test indoor air. Aeroqual’s particulate monitor, one of the most advanced, looks like an enormous old-fashioned cellphone.

But the monitor most intriguing local government environmental protection agencies and civilians alike is PurpleAir. It hooks up outside, connects to Wi-Fi, feeds into a global network and creates something like a guerrilla air quality monitoring network....

○

Citizen Science in Action

Citizen Crowdsourcing, Citizen Networkworking

http://blog.epa.gov/science/2015/03/training-citizen-scientists-to-monitor-air-quality/

https://twitter.com/epablog -- http://blog.epa.gov/science/

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Wearable Devices / 'Digibody'

With Wearable Devices That Monitor Air Quality, Scientists Can Crowdsource Pollution Maps

Emerging technology means anyone with a smartphone can become a mobile environmental monitoring station

TZOA

http://www.mytzoa.com/#homepage

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/741031201/airbeam-share-and-improve-your-air

https://mylapka.com/pem/

http://www.joinclarity.io

http://www.citi-sense.eu

http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/abs/10.1021/es505362x

···················································

Tackling climate change could save millions of lives

World Health Organization / Special report on health and climate change

http://www.who.int/globalchange/mediacentre/news/cop24-event5Dec2018/en/

"The most direct link between climate change and ill health is air pollution."

"Burning fossil fuels for power, transport and industry is the main source of the carbon emissions that are driving climate change and a major contributor to health-damaging air pollution, which every year kills over seven million people due to exposure inside and outside their homes," according to the report.

The report provides recommendations for governments on how to tackle the issue of climate change.

Those recommendations include identifying and promoting actions to reduce both carbon emissions and air pollution; mobilizing mayors and other subnational leaders to promote climate goals; engaging the health community in addressing climate change; and systematically tracking progress in health from such climate change mitigation...

Air Quality / Air Pollution

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Air_Quality

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Air_Pollution

#WorstAirQuality

Air Quality Real-time Map

AirNow / International Air Quality

World Air Quality Index / World's Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index

Air Quality Life Index (AQLI)

Particulate air pollution is the single greatest threat to human health globally.

https://aqli.epic.uchicago.edu/the-index/

Do You Know What You’re Breathing?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/style/air-quality-pollution-monitors.html

Act to measure the air pollution around you. Act to make a difference in the air you and your family breathe.

As climate change reports become increasingly dire, and as wildfires tear across the American West, and as trust in the federal government’s air quality oversight fades, thousands of people around the country are taking air measurements into their own hands.

Installed on a porch, a console table or hooked to a backpack, these small, sleek and increasingly inexpensive devices measure hyper-local air quality. They are marketed to the discerning and alarmed consumer. Some have begun to self-identify as “breathers.”

The Atmotube and PlumeLab’s Flow are small and meant to be carried around, testing the air as a person walks or bikes, helping people plan routes that avoid bad air. The Awair looks like an old-timey radio and sits on a counter to test indoor air. Aeroqual’s particulate monitor, one of the most advanced, looks like an enormous old-fashioned cellphone.

But the monitor most intriguing local government environmental protection agencies and civilians alike is PurpleAir. It hooks up outside, connects to Wi-Fi, feeds into a global network and creates something like a guerrilla air quality monitoring network....

···················································

Join In Planet Citizens

Air Visibility Monitoring (Android app) - http://robotics.usc.edu/~mobilesensing/Projects/AirVisibilityMonitoring

Biodiversity Group - http://www.biodiversitygroup.org/

Citizen Science Alliance - http://www.citizensciencealliance.org/

Climate Change and Citizen Science - http://www.slideshare.net/CitizenScienceCentral/citizen-science-and-climate-change-west

Cyber Citizens - http://up.secondwavemedia.com/innovationnews/smartphone100913.aspx

Dark Sky Meter (iOS app) - http://www.darkskymeter.com/home-2/

Eight Apps that Turn Citizens into Scientists - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/8-apps-that-turn-citizens-into-scientists/

Globe at Night (light pollution) - http://www.globeatnight.org/

Great Sunflower Project / Bees - http://www.greatsunflower.org/

iCoast (USGS) - http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/icoast/about.php

iSpot Nature (Open Lab/Open Univ) - http://www.ispotnature.org/communities/global

http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/2014/12/11/crowdsourcing-nature-observations-to-study-ecological-interactions/

International Barcode of Life - http://ibol.org/

LeafSnap (Smithsonian) - http://leafsnap.com/

Loss of the Night (Light Pollution) - http://cosalux.de/#/en/portfolio-en/loss-of-the-night-android-app/

Marine Animal Identification Network (online template) - http://main.whoi.edu/report.cfm

Marine Debris Tracker - http://www.marinedebris.engr.uga.edu/

Mobile Apps for Citizen Science (via Smithsonian) - http://www.ssec.si.edu/blog/mobile-apps-for-citizen-science

NASA Earth Exchange (NEX platform for scientific collaboration, knowledge sharing and research for the Earth science community) - https://nex.nasa.gov/nex/

National Science Foundation (US/"Citizen Science") - http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/citizenscience.jsp

NestWatch - http://nestwatch.org/

NOAA - http://www.climate.gov/teaching/resources/climate-change-and-citizen-science

Nova Energy Lab (PBS-Harvard) - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/energy/

Ocean Spaces (monitoring marine protected areas) - http://oceanspaces.org/

Open Scientist - http://www.openscientist.org/p/citizen-science-for-your-phone.html

Open Tree (urban forest mapping) - https://www.opentreemap.org/

Open University Lab - http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/open-science/

Project Noah (National Geographic) - http://www.projectnoah.org/

SatCam (iOS app) supports the Terra, Aqua, and Suomi NPP satellites - http://satcam.ssec.wisc.edu/

SciStarter (list of several hundred cit science projects) - http://scistarter.com/index.html / http://scistarter.com/blog/#sthash.ex9FXlZ3.dpbs

Scientific American - http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/

Sensr, Citizen Science app (Carnegie Mellon) - http://www.sensr.org/

TreeMap LA (TreePeople) - http://www.treepeople.org/ - https://www.treepeople.org/action

Union of Concerned Scientists, You + Your Computer = Carbon Detective - http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/what_you_can_do/climate-change-citizen-science.html#.VLgLJHv44Rk

US Global Change/Climate Assessment (Dec 2014) - http://www.globalchange.gov/news/open-government-data-more-resilient-natural-resources

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/09/unleashing-climate-data-and-innovation-more-resilient-ecosystems

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/cdi-ecosystems-12-9.pdf

Water monitoring (http://www.wef.org/ education/kit) - https://www.lamotte.com/secure/wwmday/

Whale Song Project - http://whale.fm/

You can be a scientist too (EPA) - http://www.epa.gov/climatestudents/scientists/citizen-science.html

Zooniverse - https://www.zooniverse.org/

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Healthy Earth Lungs Are Good

The Breathing Earth | Climate Change Data Visualization

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Blue-Green in the Oceans & Connection to Breathing on Earth

Fact: 71% of the planet is covered by ocean

"A single kind of blue-green algae in the ocean produces the oxygen in one of every five breaths we take"

~ from "The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One" by Sylvia Earle / National Geographic

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

"The Tiny Little Ones - Plankton"

"Ecosystems of the Sea"

Nearly all marine plants are single celled, photosynthetic plankton-algae...

It is estimated that marine plants produce well over 50% percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere...

GLOBAL PLANKTON WATCH SECCHI DISK

THE GLOBAL SEAFARER STUDY OF MARINE PHYTOPLANKTON

Phytoplankton in the sea account for approximately 50% of all photosynthesis on Earth and, through the food web they support, they underpin the marine food chain.

Living at the surface of the sea the phytoplankton are particularly sensitive to changes in sea surface temperature.

We need to know much more about these changes and you can help by making a simple piece of scientific equipment called a Secchi Disk and using the free Secchi App.

Full instructions for the project are included in the free Secchi App.

Press Release -- Scientists fear the population of the microscopic beings is in decline due to rising sea temperatures and, if true, that could have consequences for every aspect of marine life.

Plankton biologist Dr Richard Kirby, who is leading the study, said: "As the phytoplankton live at the surface of the sea they are being affected by rising sea temperatures due to climate change. A scientific paper published in 2010 suggested the ocean's plankton population had declined by as much as 40 per cent since 1950. Like all marine creatures, phytoplankton have a preferred optimum sea temperature no matter where they are in the world and we need to know more about how they are changing in order to understand the effects on the ocean's biology.” To check the levels of phytoplankton in our oceans, marine experts have developed a free smart phone app for sailors and fishermen to use wherever they are in the world.

Dr Kirby: "The Secchi Disks are still used by marine scientists to study phytoplankton but there are too few scientists to survey the world's oceans as well as we would wish. This app enables seafarers around the world to take part in a science project and if we can just get a small percentage of the global population of sailors involved, we can generate a database that will help us understand how life in the oceans is changing. It would help us learn much more about these important organisms at a crucial time when their habitat is altering due to climate change."

The Secchi app has been developed by Dr Nicholas Outram and Dr Nigel Barlow, from Plymouth University’s School of Computing and Mathematics, and the database will be maintained by Pixalytics Ltd.

○

Phytoplankton obtain energy through the process of photosynthesis and must therefore live in the well-lit surface layer (termed the euphotic zone) of an ocean, sea, lake, or other body of water. Phytoplankton account for half of all photosynthetic activity on Earth. Thus phytoplankton are responsible for much of the oxygen present in the Earth’s atmosphere – half of the total amount produced by all plant life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton

Marine Biodiversity Strongly Linked to Ocean Temperature

ScienceDaily (July 29, 2010) — In an unprecedented effort that will be published online on the 28th of July by the international journal Nature, a team of scientists mapped and analyzed global biodiversity patterns for over 11,000 marine species ranging from tiny zooplankton to sharks and whales. The researchers found striking similarities among the distribution patterns, with temperature strongly linked to biodiversity for all thirteen groups studied. These results imply that future changes in ocean temperature, such as those due to climate change, may greatly affect the distribution of life in the sea.