Citizen Science Projects
Please click on the title of the website to access the resource.
Climate Detectives - European Space Agency
Climate Detectives is an ESA school project for students between 8 and 15 years old. Students are challenged to ‘make a difference’ in understanding and protecting Earth’s climate. They will identify a climate problem by observing their local environment and be tasked to investigate it as ‘Climate Detectives’. To this end, they will use available Earth Observation data or take measurements on the ground. Based on their investigation, teams will propose a way to help reduce the problem. The students will learn about climate on Earth as a complex and changing system and the importance of respecting our environment. A set of curricular classroom resources has been developed to encourage student's participation and motivation and to improve their understanding of Earth's climate. These resources cover the topic weather and climate, seasons, Earth and atmosphere as well as natural and human-made disasters.
We run climate modelling experiments using the home computers of thousands of volunteers. This allows us to answer important and difficult questions about how climate change is affecting our world now and how it will affect our world in the future. Our solution is to appeal to volunteer computing, which combines the power of thousands of ordinary computers, each of which tackles one small part of the larger modelling task. By using your computers, we can improve our understanding of, and confidence in, climate change predictions more than would ever be possible using the supercomputers currently available to scientists.
ClimateWatch is an authentic learning experience that can be incorporated into secondary and tertiary school subjects, school ground explorations, field excursions, camps, or a long-term learning and phenology-monitoring activity. Taking part in citizen science that monitors and records plant and animal behaviour is naturally aligned to the Science stream of the national curriculum. ClimateWatch is also a great way to build student capacity in critical and creative thinking, numeracy and ITC skills.
April 22, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. In recognition of this milestone Earth Day Network, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the U.S. Department of State’s Eco-Capitals Forum are launching Earth Challenge 2020 as the world’s largest coordinated citizen science campaign. Earth Challenge 2020 will engage millions of global citizens to aggregate and collect more than one billion data points in areas including air quality, water quality, biodiversity, pollution, and human health. Through Earth Challenge 2020, citizen science volunteers will learn about their local conditions, and leverage information to inspire collaborative action and influence policy decisions.
Elementary GLOBE is designed to introduce students in grades K-4 to the study of Earth system science."The Teacher Implementation Guide provides an overview of Elementary GLOBE, the connections that the curriculum makes to literacy, the use of science journals, elementary science inquiry, standards alignment, and connections to other parts of elementary curriculum.
Translated versions: GLOBE makes every effort to provide translations of our materials in the official U. N. languages. Currently, Elementary GLOBE materials are available in Arabic, English, French, German, Norwegian, and Spanish. || STEAM, E-Books,
GeoChallenge - National Geographic
The National Geographic GeoChallenge is a project-based, multilevel competition that empowers students in grades four through eight to develop creative solutions to today’s urgent environmental problems. Students form teams of between four and six people and—through research, collaboration, and creativity—take action on a real-world environmental issue. Along the way, students present their ideas through mapmaking, model building, and video production. Combining science, geography, and communication skills, GeoChallenge teams generate solutions to critical issues, just like National Geographic Explorers.
GLOBE | Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment
Teachers/Students - www.globe.gov
Anyone - www.observer.globe.gov
GLOBE, the Global Learning and Observations to benefit the Environment Program, is a worldwide program that brings together students, teachers, scientists and citizens to promote science and learning about the environment. Through a hands-on approach to inquiry, participants are encouraged to engage in local investigations that cover five core fields: atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, soil (pedosphere), and Earth as a system. Observations made locally are submitted to the GLOBE data and information system, and can be accessed freely online. These measurements are combined with readings at automated stations to create a worldwide resource for conducting scientific inquiry; some measurements serve as ground truth for NASA satellite data products (e.g., clouds, soil moisture). The GLOBE data and information system contains over 130 million measurements from more than 10 million students in 113 countries around the world since its operation begun in 1995. Beginning in 2016, GLOBE has expanded its participation outside of the formal school setting to include individual citizens of all ages through a GLOBE Observer (GO) mobile app. GO will evolve with time to support Earth science interests. Currently, it includes observation of clouds, mosquito habitat, and the upcoming solar eclipse. Sponsoring/Partner Organizations: NASA, NOAA, NSF, State Department, Youth Learning as Citizen Environmental Scientists