Citizen science offers a great way for scientists to access more data from around the world, and for the public to be part of the process of scientific research.

Working with satellite data often involves using computers to help process and analyse the large quantities of data that the satellites produce. However, for some tasks, computers struggle. Identifying complex patterns for example, is something that humans are very good at, but can be very hard to programme a computer to do.

TASK

At the website linked below you will find a project where citizen scientists are helping analyse images from satellites to identify kelp forests. It would take a single scientist a very long time to do this themselves, but with the help of citizen scientists, it takes much less.

Visit https://www.floatingforests.org/ and see if you can help identify some kelp forests.

Kelp is a really important thing to monitor as it provides a habitat for a wide diversity of creatures. It’s also useful for people – dampening the impacts of coastal waves and providing useful substances that can be used in a huge variety of products including cosmetics and ice cream!

You may like to check out other citizen science projects on https://www.zooniverse.org.

Or if you are a keen sailor, sign up for the Secchi Disk project: http://www.secchidisk.org/