Citizen scientists get involved with global land use mapping

The Geo-wiki team are looking for citizen scientists to get involved.

A ‘Geo-wiki’ tool that uses Google Earth as a way to plot an open source global land use map facility has launched a competition to get more citizen scientists involved. Anyone with Google Earth installed on their map are welcome to join in the ambitious project.

As well as getting volunteers across the world to contribute to the land use mapping project the organisers are hoping that it will help raise awareness and levels of community involvement in environmental monitoring.

Geo-Wiki attempts to bring information together on many aspects of the Earth’s surface, this information is primarily associated with how humans have managed or modified landscapes and ecosystems.

Accuracy of land use maps can be variable depending on region.

Land use maps can be quite common place and detailed in some regions but there are also situations where different land use maps shows different types of usage – in some areas of the world the maps are very vague. It’s essential that land use managers and policy makers have accurate details about land use to be able to make the best decisions for future development.

“Global land cover information available to policymakers and the research community today is derived from remote sensing,” says Dr Steffen Fritz, leader of the Geo-Wiki development team and research leader from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). “While there are several excellent regional and national land cover datasets already available that capture some basic information, there are still many regions where the information derived from satellite sources is conflicting, or inconsistent, across the datasets.”

“This means we cannot be certain of the spatial distribution of deforestation, how much land is being used for cropping or, for example, the extent of urbanization. This has implications for how regions assess such things as their carbon storage potential, how much land could be available for food production or biofuel expansion, decisions that are becoming increasingly important as climate change and food security concerns escalate,” says Dr Fritz.

Citizen scientists needed to log the world’s land use.

Volunteers and citizen scientists who want to get involved don’t need to get their walking boots and waterproofs on though to take part. By signing up at the web site each time the visit and log in Google Earth will load up on their page. A region of the planet will be selected at random and the user will need to fill in a short questionnaire about what they see in the assigned grid. They can get close up views if needed by zooming in and out on the satellite images shown on Google Earth. Once they’ve completed one grid they can refresh the page and another grid will be randomly assigned.

One important aspect of the project will see land use of regions validated by observation rather than by algorithm of computer software. Manual validation should also give a more accurate and detailed picture of each grid as the observer will be able to assign multiple land use with percentages to each grid.

Other wikis to cover more specialist land use.

A range of more specialised wikis are also available or under construction including specialist agricultural wikis, urban cover wikis and biomass wikis.

“Geo-Wiki attempts to bring information together on many aspects of the Earth’s surface, this information is primarily associated with how humans have managed or modified landscapes and ecosystems. To address the many challenges global communities are dealing with, such as climate change or food security, we need multidisciplinary responses. Policymakers thus need information that is not only as accurate as possible but that is holistic – we cannot deal with climate change, independent of how we deal with food security or energy security. Geo-Wiki is one tool to start bridging this information gap, integrating information, and, ultimately, we believe supporting the development of more integrated policy and management decisions,” said Dr Fritz.

Competition launched to encourage new observers.

To boost the current numbers of observers – about 700 at the moment – the Geo-wiki team has organised a competition that people can sign up to and take part in. Prizes include amazon.com vochures and for the top 10 observers that will be made co-authors of a publication that will be produced from the land cover observations made during the duration of the competition.

If you enjoy the computer and want to help researchers better understand how we are using the planet then sign up and start your new hobby as a geographer!

External sites:

GEO-wiki .