How mobile picture posts will expand participation in the Digital Earth Watch and Picture Post citizen environmental monitoring network

Background/Question/Methods

The Digital Earth Watch (DEW) environmental monitoring project is a citizen science initiative funded by NASA to create opportunities for informal and formal science educators and the community-at-large to collaborate by sharing digital photographs from Picture Post sites. A key message in DEW is that although plants are dynamic and respond continuously to their environment, they do so either on a time-scale that most people don’t notice or with a subtlety our senses can’t detect. Activities are aimed at involving citizens in local environmental monitoring by 1) taking digital photographs at a designated Picture Post site in a consistent, sequential order, 2) uploading the digital photographs to the Picture Post website, 3) examining the digital photographs using the image analysis tools on the Picture Post website, 4) continuing to take photos on a regular basis, and 5) sharing digital photographic records with community organizations dedicated to environmental monitoring and use. A Picture Post is simply an octagon placed in the center of a flat surface and secured to a post anchored in the ground or onto a building. The edges of the octagon allow positioning of the camera so the complete landscape may be photographed in less than a minute. Since the Picture Post program began, posts have been set up to monitor trails, forests, water, wetlands, shoreline mitigation, and schoolyards.

Results/Conclusions

Recently, digital cameras have largely been overtaken in popularity by smart phones. Many more people are likely to be out walking with their smart phone than with their digital camera. This has opened up a whole new concept of Picture Post as a mobile device. A new DEW android app takes advantage of smart phone technologies for location (GPS of the current location and a Google Map of all and nearby picture posts), networking (automatic picture uploads and downloads), and for creating the capability to not only take repeat photographs (using reference pictures as a guide) but to set up “virtual” picture posts (using the accelerometer and compass) that do not require a permanent structure. This presentation will demonstrate putting these capabilities together into the DEW mobile app.