EAGER: Citizen science as a tool for temporal water quality assessment at the major watershed scale

密西西比河流域，从明尼苏达州的伊塔斯卡湖到墨西哥湾，绵延2300多英里，穿过或沿着10个不同州的边界。这条河的主要水、沉积物和营养物质来自四个主要的子流域：密西西比河上游、密苏里河、俄亥俄河和阿肯色/红河。人们认为，水质是墨西哥湾（即密西西比河入海口附近的死区）氧气浓度低的原因。相对于这一分水岭，公众参与科学研究可以成为数据收集的宝贵资源。在不同地点同时重复取样可以估计化合物在特定优先地点出现的时间变异性。其次，由于采样是移动的，如果环境条件发生变化，采样可以快速调整。因此，该项目的长期目标是建立一个国家公民科学网络，可以跨地理尺度监测水中的污染物，这些污染物太大，无法用传统方法有效采样。这项研究是新颖的，因为它可以在广泛的地理范围内提供大量同时收集的数据。使用标准方法和技术是不可能收集这种数据的。为了实现这一目标，有必要满足以下具体目标：1)评估公民科学家收集可重复和定量的营养和浊度数据的能力。2)利用信息技术，使用移动设备（如智能手机）来捕获数据并验证数据的完整性，以便进一步分析。3)在密西西比河流域内开展公民科学运动，以产生关于该地区水质参数的空间和时间上可靠的定量数据集。公民科学家将获得市售的磷酸盐、硝酸盐和阿特拉津评估试纸，并将获得评估浊度的设备。然后，他们将通过目前正在开发的交互式IT数据管理系统提交他们的数据。为了解决数据的完整性问题，一系列实验室试验将以专家以及经验丰富和幼稚的公民科学家为重点，评估从公民科学家那里获得的水质数据的准确性和可重复性。预计到研究结束时，将制定一系列协议，以确保公民科学家收集营养物质、农用化学品和浑浊度数据的数据质量和可靠性。这个项目可以成为一个模型，供国内和国际上的其他科学家用来开发监测项目，利用公民来收集高质量的数据。除了收集数据之外，通过与内布拉斯加州流域网络合作开展该项目，公民科学参与将通过在内布拉斯加州奥马哈社区、内布拉斯加州和整个美国中西部地区开展科学教育，提高人们对环境问题的认识。此外，个人访问K-12课程，向公众发表演讲，以及通过社交媒体（包括两个网页，两个Facebook页面和一个listserv）分发信息，都被用来将社交媒体活动的结果转化为社区教育和意识。

1644595KolokThe Mississippi River basin, from Lake Itasca, Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, stretches over 2,300 miles and travels through or along the border of 10 different states. The river receives major inputs of water, sediment and nutrients from four major sub-watersheds: the Upper Mississippi River, the Missouri River, the Ohio River and the Arkansas/Red River. It is thought that water quality is responsible for the low oxygen concentrations in the Gulf of Mexico, known as the Dead Zone, near where the Mississippi discharges into the Gulf. Relative to this watershed, public participation in scientific research can be a valuable resources for data collection. Samples which are repeated and simultaneously taken in different locations can estimate the temporal variability of a compound's occurrence at specific priority sites. Second, since the sampling is mobile, sampling can be adjusted quickly if the environmental conditions change. Therefore, the long-term goal of this project is to build a national citizen science network that can monitor for contaminants in water across geographical scales that are too large to be efficiently sampled using traditional methods.This research is novel, as it can provide large amounts of simultaneously collected data across a wide geography. Such data collection would not be possible with standard methods and technologies. To fulfill this objective, it will be necessary to satisfy the following specific aims: 1) Evaluate the capacity for citizen scientists to collect repeatable and quantitative data on nutrients and turbidity. 2) To leverage information technology using mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) to capture the data and validate the data integrity for further analysis. 3) To conduct a citizen science campaign within the Mississippi River watershed that will produce spatially and temporally robust quantitative data sets on water quality parameters across the region. The citizen scientists will be provided with commercially available assessment test strips for phosphate, nitrate, and atrazine and will be given a device to estimate turbidity. They will then submit their data via an interactive IT data management system currently under development. To address data integrity, a series of laboratory trials, focusing on experts, as well as experienced and naive citizen scientists, will evaluate the accuracy and reproducibility of water quality data obtained from citizen scientists. It is anticipated that by the end of the study, a series of protocols will be developed to assure data quality and reliability from the citizen scientists collecting data on nutrients, agrichemicals and turbidity. This project can be a model that other scientists, both nationally and internationally, can use to develop monitoring programs that use citizens to collect quality data. In addition to the collection of the data, by partnering with the Nebraska Watershed Network on this project, citizen science participation will bring awareness of environmental issues by bringing science education to life among the Omaha, Nebraska community, to the state of Nebraska, and to the Midwestern United States as a whole. Furthermore, personal visits to K-12 classes, presentations to the public, and information distributed via social media (including two webpages, two Facebook pages, and a listserv) are all being used to leverage the results from a social media campaign into community education and awareness.