WaterLinx | Citizen Science vs HAB Reports Usage & Stats
Water constitutes and connects all life forms on earth. However, current human water- and land-use patterns and emissions from our socio-industrial and consumption practices undermine the capacity of natural ecosystems in water and on land to regenerate themselves to remain a healthy basis for diverse forms of life. The health of interconnected water and soil systems is deteriorating at an ever-faster pace. Potential impacts from climate change threaten to accelerate this decline Just reducing our harmful impacts will no longer suffice. We need to take regenerative action. Restoring healthy water bodies is also a fundamental need to make the planet’s life support system with water and earth more resilient to the potential impacts of climate change. But where should we act first, and what actions promise success? EU Data sets relating to water quality are expensive to obtain and accordingly scantly distributed across time and space. Most data related to large rivers but not smaller streams that may flow through biodiversity-rich areas.
Citizen science can play an important role in complementing official data sets on water quality to identify pollution hot spots, in particular in small streams that are not usually monitored by experts (König et al., 2020). This APP provides a citizen science tool to explore water quality and ecosystem health where you stand and can take action. Data collected with this APP can
- inform you and any citizen in an accessible manner on where regenerative action for healthy water bodies might be most urgently needed,
- open new windows on compliance with EU water quality standards and on the effectiveness of Luxembourg policy making and implementation,
- be used by scientists (experts and citizens) to evaluate and learn from regenerative projects.
If you would like to engage in both monitoring with this APP and regenerative action, you can seek inspiration for practical projects with impact on www.transformation-lab.lu and www.aktioun-nohaltegkeet.lu .
- Apple App Store
- Free
- Education
Store Rank
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From 2014 SAMS has operated an online risk assessment and early warning system for harmful algal blooms in Scottish waters. This is composed of weekly HAB risk assessments in the form of bulletins for the Shetland Shellfish industry and an open-access web portal that provides a site-specific HAB/biotoxin risk index and mathematical model-based forecasts of future HAB events. This App builds on that work to provide updates and notifications directly to your phone.
Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are overgrowths of certain species of phytoplankton in water. Some produce dangerous toxins in fresh or marine water but even nontoxic blooms hurt the environment and local economies through their impact on aquaculture and other uses of the coastal zone.
HABS can produce extremely dangerous toxins that can sicken or kill people and animals. High biomass blooms create low oxygen zones in the water, other taxa can raise treatment costs for drinking water. HABs can seriously hurt the aquaculture industry that depends on a pristine environment water.
This app displays the most recently water sample data collected across Scotland and Sabah region of Malaysia. You can view this data by by individual sample site using the map function. You can also use the app to report algal blooms directly SAMS.
- Apple App Store
- Free
- Reference
Store Rank
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WaterLinx | Citizen Science VS. 
HAB ReportsDecember 15, 2024