Citizen Science App Release: Tea Bag Index on SPOTTERON

A warm welcome to the new released Tea Bag Index Citizen Science app, now running on the SPOTTERON platform! We are especially happy to have this well known Citizen Science research project about soil and the global carbon cycle joining our CitSci network of projects by partner across Europe and beyond.The first spots by schools have already been contributed and the the first teabags have been burried to observe the decay rate of plant material on the locations.

The main core of the Tea Bag Index project is to weight and bury two destinct kinds of tea bags in the soil and excavate them after a period of 3 month. By that tested and established method, the decay rate of the plant material in the soil can be measured and climate models can be improved by that data.

"We developed a simple and cheap method to measure decay rate of plant material by using tea. The method consists of burying tea bags with Green tea and Rooibos and digging them up ca. three months later. In this period, the tea will decay, and will therefore show what will happen with normal plant material in the soil. This method was developed and tested by a team of researchers from the University of Utrecht, Umeå University, The Netherlands Institute of Ecology and the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety Ltd." - Tea Bag Index website

An extended Citizen Science App concept

But the new Tea Bag Index app on SPOTTERON offers so much more - we created a more open approach together with the research team based on our design concept "Citizen Science Experience" for participatory apps. Users can now also observe the color of the soil, spot soil life, land use and even share data about pollution in ground - the new Tea Bag Index App can be used to contribute observations about a wide range of soil related attributes.

We like to say a big thank you to the research team to be open to new ideas and the opportunity to apply the "Citizen Science Experience" concept also at the Tea Bag Index apps.

Everyone can participate

Are you interested about the soil, which has so much impact on our daily lifes? Join up and contribute some observations! You can find the apps of the project here:

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotteron.teabagindex
IOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tea-bag-index-spotteron/id1465181150
Web-App for Browser: https://www.spotteron.com/teabagindex

Tea Bag Index App - Project Partners: