Black Sea is one of the most vulnerable ecosystems in Europe due to its isolation and being catchment for some of Europe’s largest rivers (Danube, Dnieper, Don). The measures for conservation of that fragile environment should be multi-sectoral and general public is getting more sensitive to the environmental issues willing to act for lowering the stress on the vulnerable ecosystem. Different pressures and threats affect the Black Sea negatively: over fishing, pollution and introduction of invasive alien species, climate change, etc.
BLACK SEA WATCH PROJECT is a joint initiative of Green Balkans NGO, Bulgaria and TUDAV Foundation, Turkey aiming to raise public awareness on biodiversity of the Black Sea and to promote “citizen science” – collection of information for observations and regular monitoring of different plants and animals by amateurs of all walks of life.
To facilitate that process mobile application BLACKSEAWATCH is developed that is freely available with versions for Android at Google Play and iOS at Apple store. Additionally the website BLACKSEAWATCH.ORG is developed to allow people that are not using smartphones to get involved in data collection and become amateur scientists. Mobile version of the website will help users of smartphones that work on operation systems different from Android and iOS to submit information for their observations and findings.
Use of the mobile application and the website requires a simple registration with email and password. After registration users will be able to submit their observations by pictures with information on location, date, suggested observed species and other comments. Experts on different groups will review and verify the submitted information and after approval it will visualize on a map. All observations will be able to be filtered by group and species and shown on the map.
Mobile application has four main pages. Three of these are accessible by icons at the bottom - home page at the left showing all observations by different groups of organisms, central page for login and submitting pictures with information and on the right will be accessible Species catalogue helping amateur naturalists to identify their finding. Fourth icon is situated at top right corner and leads to info page for the project and allows selection of language – English, Bulgarian or Turkish.
We do hope that use of modern tools will attract more people to study and conservation of the vulnerable inhabitants of the Black Sea.
The project is co-funded by the European Union and Republic of Turkey within the framework of the Civil Society Dialogue IV Programme.
Contacts:
Dimitar Popov - +359885108712, dpopov@greenbalkans.org
BLACK SEA WATCH PROJECT is a joint initiative of Green Balkans NGO, Bulgaria and TUDAV Foundation, Turkey aiming to raise public awareness on biodiversity of the Black Sea and to promote “citizen science” – collection of information for observations and regular monitoring of different plants and animals by amateurs of all walks of life.
To facilitate that process mobile application BLACKSEAWATCH is developed that is freely available with versions for Android at Google Play and iOS at Apple store. Additionally the website BLACKSEAWATCH.ORG is developed to allow people that are not using smartphones to get involved in data collection and become amateur scientists. Mobile version of the website will help users of smartphones that work on operation systems different from Android and iOS to submit information for their observations and findings.
Use of the mobile application and the website requires a simple registration with email and password. After registration users will be able to submit their observations by pictures with information on location, date, suggested observed species and other comments. Experts on different groups will review and verify the submitted information and after approval it will visualize on a map. All observations will be able to be filtered by group and species and shown on the map.
Mobile application has four main pages. Three of these are accessible by icons at the bottom - home page at the left showing all observations by different groups of organisms, central page for login and submitting pictures with information and on the right will be accessible Species catalogue helping amateur naturalists to identify their finding. Fourth icon is situated at top right corner and leads to info page for the project and allows selection of language – English, Bulgarian or Turkish.
We do hope that use of modern tools will attract more people to study and conservation of the vulnerable inhabitants of the Black Sea.
The project is co-funded by the European Union and Republic of Turkey within the framework of the Civil Society Dialogue IV Programme.
Contacts:
Dimitar Popov - +359885108712, dpopov@greenbalkans.org
