Overview
On June 26th, 2024, from 14:00 to 15:30 CEST, we will host the Atlantic & Arctic Weekly Hour featuring the OTTERS Project. OTTERS, an EU Mission Ocean project, views citizen science as an excellent tool for fostering citizen engagement and stewardship of marine and freshwater environments.
To achieve this, the project aims to scale up citizen science activities via:
a) helping promote standards and best practices in citizen science data collection methods and interoperability,
b) initiate discussions on legal and ethical topics related to citizen science data privacy and accessibility,
c) design umbrella Spring-to-Sea campaigns to cluster ongoing citizen science initiatives under thematic and geographic identities to facilitate joint efforts, synergies, and scaling up of these projects, and d) to help educators integrate citizen science modules into their school and university curricula.
During this webinar, the work done in the OTTERS project will be presented, highlighting the material produced and inform the audience of the upcoming activities. The session will conclude with a discussion to investigate synergies with relevant projects and interested individuals.
The OTTERS Project aims to promote societal transformation for marine and freshwater stewardship through scaling up citizen science.
OTTERS will support the coordination of EU citizen science initiatives focused on marine and freshwater, aiming to:
- Accelerate the creation and adoption of technical, legal, and ethical standards for citizen science protocols and methods.
- Examine the effectiveness of citizen science in societal transformation towards sustainable aquatic ecosystem stewardship.
- Pilot cross-community, watershed-based Spring-to-Sea Stewardship Campaigns.
Programme
14:00-14:05
4:00-14:05: Welcome, Valerie de Liedekerke, AIR Centre
14:05-14:10
Unveiling Project OTTERS: Goals and Vision – Garabet Kazanjian, American University of Armenia
14:10-14:30
Upscaling citizen science for the water domain
- Freshwater citizen science; challenges and opportunities for impact and policy (WFD, SDGs) – Steven Loiselle, Earthwatch Europe, University of Siena (CSGI)
- Marine citizen science challenges; and opportunities for impact and policy (MSFD, SDGs) – Georgios Sylaios, Democritus University of Thrace
14:30-14:40
Integrating citizen science in school curricula – Priscila Doran, https://nuclio.org/en/
14:40-15:00
The OTTERS Spring-to-Sea clustering campaigns and toolkits – Laura Gavrilut, https://www.21cconsultancy.com/
15:00-15:30
Discussion to find synergies with other projects
Speakers
SPEAKER
Garabet Kazanjian
Unveiling Project OTTERS: Goals and Vision
Garabet Kazanjian is an Assistant Professor at the American University of Armenia and a lead aquatic researcher at the AUA Acopian Center for the Environment. He holds a MSc in Fisheries Ecology and a PhD in Limnology from Humboldt University of Berlin. Kazanjian’s research interests cover assessing water quality, primary production and carbon sequestration in aquatic ecosystems, as well as applying innovative tools and participatory approaches in watershed management and policy advancement. Currently, Kazanjian is coordinating the Horizon Europe OTTERS project, as well as leading the development of The Iliad Policy Impact Facility and The Iliad Academy within the Horizon 2020 Iliad Digital Twin of the Ocean project (ocean-twin.eu).
Garabet will briefly introduce the OTTERS project, its aims and how it plans to achieve them.
SPEAKER
Steven Loiselle
Upscaling citizen science for the water domain
Prof. Steven Loiselle is a Senior Research Lead at Earthwatch Europe and an Associate Professor at the University of Siena (Italy). He leads global citizen science programmes working on healthy soils and freshwaters, in partnership with communities, business, regulatory and research stakeholders. He is active in programmes in more than 30 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas and has coordinated international research in African Great Lakes, Paraná wetlands, Mediterranean rivers, and shallow lakes in the Yangtze valley, exploring solutions to global and local challenges and helping local communities to improve the resilience of their local environment.
Steven will introduce aspects of freshwater citizen science programmes in Europe and across the world.
SPEAKER
Georgios Sylaios
Marine citizen science challenges; and opportunities for impact and policy (MSFD, SDGs)
Georgios Sylaios is a Professor at the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), Department of Environmental Engineering, Xanthi, Greece. Presently, he is the Director of the Laboratory of Ecological Engineering and Technology. He is a physical oceanographer by training, with long experience in the coordination of European and nationally-funded research projects. Sylaios has been the coordinator of the Blue Growth research project entitled ODYSSEA, funded by Horizon 2020 with a total budget of 8.4Meuros. He has been a member of the UN Group of Experts for the “Second Assessment of the Global Ocean – Status, Trends and Challenges” and external advisor to the Hellenic Ministry of Environment on MSFD implementation. He is the co-founder and Chairman of the spin-off company ENVRIO applying precision irrigation at farm level, using satellite images, observations from drones, soil and moisture sensors and simulations of water balance and management.
The presentation will examine the capacity of Citizen Science projects and efforts to contribute towards the implementation of the MSFD monitoring and fulfillment of the SDG goals. The presentation will exploit the main marine citizen science challenges and will address opportunities for deeper collaboration and networking to upscale the CS environmental and policy impact.
SPEAKER
Priscila Doran
Integrating citizen science in school curricula
Priscila Doran has a post-graduation in Psychology of Education, a MSc degree in human biology and environment and a degree in Biology. She is a certified teacher trainer in Portugal in the areas of Educational Psychology, Biology and Environmental Sciences. She has been a member of NUCLIO since 2011, where she is part of the management board, leading teams and coordinating projects related to innovation in education. She coordinates projects related to several areas of education, such as innovation in student assessment; the Maker movement, and maker spaces for education; Innovative teaching and learning, education for sustainability, among others. She is currently part of the OTTERS team, a project that brings citizen science into education, with the purpose of leveraging citizen science programs while promoting richer and more meaningful education opportunities for students.
Citizen Science and Education have the potential to enrich and benefit each other. While students can contribute to generating data and creating new ideas to solve contemporary issues, citizen science can support the development of several important competencies and allow students to apply their learning in a real-life context. However, systematic integration of citizen science into the school curricula is yet to be achieved. OTTERS aims to contribute to this field by engaging educators and citizen science programs in participatory activities to co-create a meaningful roadmap to integrate citizen science into the school curricula. Priscila will address this issue and present highlights from the initial participatory workshops in Portugal and present upcoming events including speakers from other blue schools initiatives (June 27) and the OTTERS summer school in Greece (30 June – 5 July) for training teachers on project-based citizen science education.
SPEAKER
Laura Gavrilut
The OTTERS Spring-to-Sea clustering campaigns and toolkits
Laura is a seasoned Project Management professional with a strong track record structuring and delivering successful EU-funded innovation projects. Laura is adept at creating compelling communication material as well as organizing high impact large and small scale educative, scientific and/or dissemination activities, including numerous international expert groups meetings, conferences, workshops and hackathons. She is currently managing day-to-day communication activities for OTTERS and DS2 projects. An engineer by training, Laura’s combines outstanding analytic and organisational skills to manage internal and external stakeholders, quickly resolve problems and create effective project processes. Her extensive experience working on pan-European projects has given her a strong ability to adapt to and manage complex, multicultural environments in which team building and collaboration are key.
Laura will present the clustering initiatives to develop umbrella Spring-to-Sea campaigns in 3 pilot countries (Italy, Portugal, and Armenia). She will introduce the toolkits produced to help citizen engagement and engage the audience in an interactive co-design exercise.
Resources
June 26th, 2024, Atlantic & Arctic Lighthouse Weekly Hour S02E13 with OTTERS
Relevant links
The OTTERS Project aims to promote societal transformation for marine and freshwater stewardship through scaling up citizen science. OTTERS will support the coordination of EU citizen science initiatives focused on marine and freshwater, aiming to:
With a 2030 target, the EU Mission "Restore our Ocean and Waters" aims to protect and restore the health of our ocean and waters through research and innovation, citizen engagement and blue investments.