Citizen Science helping improve satellite detection of water quality

Water colour is a very informative indicator of the ecological state of marine and fresh-waters. Until recently, only measurable with a suite of unwieldy instruments. Now these measurements can be mad by citizen scientist using a smart phone app and some other easy to deploy instrumentation. These citizens will generate a large pool of valid data for calibration of satellite information and provide a synoptic view of river, lake and coastal water quality for natural resource management in Australian. Each participant will obtain a quantitative understanding of how local water bodies change seasonally and in response to short duration events such as floods or cyclones.

水体颜色是反映海洋与淡水生态系统状态的极具参考价值的指标。此前，此类指标仅能通过整套笨重的专业仪器完成测量。如今，公民科学家（citizen scientist）可借助智能手机应用及其他易于部署的设备开展此类测量工作。此类参与者将生成大量有效数据，用于卫星观测数据的校准，并可为澳大利亚的自然资源管理工作提供河流、湖泊与近岸海域水质的全域概览。每位参与者都将定量掌握当地水体的季节变化规律，以及其对洪水、气旋等短时极端事件的响应特征。