One of the most important aspects of Citizen Science is recognizing that participants voluntarily invest their time and effort into contributing to scientific projects—without compensation. While their passion for nature and curiosity about the environment drive participation, another crucial motivator is often overlooked: the desire to engage and ...

On January 15th and 16th, 2025, leading scientists, researchers, and stakeholders gathered in Larnaca, Cyprus, for the latest meeting of the EFFECTIVE Consortium. This international collaboration is dedicated to advancing environmental data management, coastal sustainability, and innovative technological solutions to address ecological challenges i...

How do science, citizen science, and nature reinforce each other to address social issues? This key topic was the focus of a podcast recorded last summer by Amsterdamse Bos (Amsterdam Forest) and the Athena Institute, a research institute of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Last week, the podcast was published, and given the interesting insig...

Every so often, the journey is the reward. When it comes to Citizen Science projects that include data about paths and routes traveled by citizens in the research, recording such geospatial data live is a crucial feature. Projects from areas like environmental health, urban transportation, or social science studies can benefit from being able to en...

Is it strange to live still optimistically and in hope in times of the polycrisis? This question was posed at this year's Ars Electronica Festival in Linz with the theme HOPE. We attended the festival in early September, and in this blog, we'll briefly discuss the workshop "Plant Life on the POSTCITY Roof" led by botanist Friedrich Schwarz. Togethe...

The climate crisis is undeniably reshaping our world, with its impacts becoming increasingly evident across various aspects of life. From record-breaking temperatures and shifting habitats to declining biodiversity and changes in infrastructure and politics, the effects of climate change are both vast and complex. Many of us can easily perceive war...

COSEA is a collaborative, participatory, and community-driven project, funded by the European Union. It focuses on marine environments, marine species, and their habitats, as well as on various innovative approaches to their protection: TRANSEATION and EFFECTIVE are the two science projects that collaborate within COSEA with individual methods and ...

In the last months, the IPM Popillia project, funded by Horizon 2020, has collaborated with SPOTTERON to create informational and dissemination materials about the invasive Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica), which has been spreading across Europe for several years. As part of the IPM Popillia Consortium, SPOTTERON created...

Suriname has roughly 14 languages - the official and most spoken language is Dutch. One of Suriname's indigenous languages is Trio, which is spoken by the Tarëno, a conglomeration of analogous subgroups and distinct Amerindian groups (Mirella Nankoe, 2017). The total Tarëno population (Tarëno means "people from here") in Suriname can...

The SPOTTERON platform is always extending and together with projects across Europe, Australia, America, and Africa, new features and functionalities are constantly developed. With a new set of major core extensions and the overhaul of important system-related functionalities, the new platform version, SPOTTERON FOUR, brings new innovative tools an...

As you may have heard, iOS version 17 is on the horizon. A new operating system version introduces new features, polishes existing ones, and carries the torch further. But it also means that the App Store enforces an update of the "base system" on which mobile Apps for iOS are built on, and all existing Apps must be updated to the new software gene...

The Horizon Europe 2020 YouCount project recently concluded, summarizing its experiences and findings in a comprehensive Handbook. SPOTTERON has been a steadfast supporter of the Social Citizen Science project, e.g., in designing the YouCount Citizen Science App, the final conference, and now in creating the design for the recently published handbo...

The AmphiBiom project from BOKU Vienna focuses on comprehensive protection of the green toad and has therefore launched a new amphibian Citizen Science project: AmphiApp. SPOTTERON had the honor of visualizing the project and designing the Citizen Science App AmphiApp, the amphi.at website, the logo and visual ide...

The Final Conference for YouCount occurred in Brussels at the start of December. YouCount is a Social Citizen Science project that unites young individuals and stakeholders to collaboratively generate new knowledge and innovations that can contribute to addressing one of the complex societal challenges being faced by Europe: How to increa...

For IPM Popillia, we designed a folder for the Italian Citizen Science Conference in Pisa, which took place last weekend. This folder serves as an introduction to the project for fellow Citizen Science initiatives and individuals potentially interested in becoming Citizen Scientists. It includes key details about the project, insights on ...

Besides the visual component of a Citizen Science observation, in some projects, recording audio is as important. From bird songs to amphibian calls, from city noise to dialects - sound recordings offer a distinct form of data in natural science projects, in linguistic citizen science, or even in capturing reports about environmental quality. ...

The European Space Agency and its new way of communicating with the public The climate crisis was one of the thematic focal points at the Ars Electronica Festival 2023, which took place in early September. The European Space Agency, whose observational data provides the basis for national and international efforts to predict future changes in clima...

Last weekend marked a historic moment for Citizen Science in Europe. The first-ever European Union Prize for Citizen Science was awarded on Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023 at this year's Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. The theme of the event was "Who owns the truth?" - a question that is particularly relevant for Citizen Science. We were on-site and...

The Citizen Science App for measuring rainfall and weather from HydroCrowd has only recently been released. HydroCrowd is a research project of the Justus Liebig University Giessen. The project explores the potential of participatory monitoring in selected mountainous regions in Ecuador, Honduras and Tanzania to increase the availability of hy...

Recently the Falling Walls Global Call selected 50 finalists for the best science engagement projects from around the world! Among them are two Citizen Science projects whose Apps run on the SPOTTERON platform - YouCount, funded by Horizon Europe and Soils for Science from the University of Queensland, Institute for Molecular Bioscience. As pa...