Water Guardians: measuring their health to learn how to protect them
An app for collecting field data, for a generation of guardians of the environment.
"Guardiani delle Acque (Water Guardians) is the citizen science project that turns students and citizens into sentinels of the sea. It collects real data on the quality of the coastal and river waters of the Adriatic, makes it open to everyone and puts it at the service of research and environmental policy."
It is a project conceived by Fano Università del Mare, together with Reef Check Italia, the Marche Polytechnic University and the Istituto di Istruzione Superiore Polo 3 Fano, to get schools and young people actively involved in environmental monitoring.
Participants receive specific training and scientific equipment to take reliable measurements of several health indicators such as pH, nitrates, phosphates, salinity, turbidity, temperature and the presence of microplastics.
Through the app we created for them, the data entered by the students is consolidated, pre-validated and presented to those in charge for approval. The final result is an open dataset of measurements collected along rivers, river mouths and coasts.
Measuring these parameters makes it possible to keep the waters of our ecosystems constantly monitored for pollution from agricultural nutrients, microplastics and chemicals, as well as giving a continuous reading of the effects of climate change.
Getting new generations used to observing the health of the environment is the first step towards learning to take care of it responsibly.
Project website: https://guardianidelleacque.org/