O - A Marine Citizen Research Kit

Did you know that seagrass meadows are the most potent natural CO2-storage-system, even more than forests? They provide a habitat for loads of species, keep the water clear by binding sediment and protect coastal areas by absorbing wave energy.

As important their role as valuable ecosystem engineers is, as undiscovered and threatened seagrasses are - mainly through anthropogenic activities like bottom trawling and anchoring. Their growth is slowed by rising water temperatures due to climate change, so it is impossible to compensate the human destruction with natural regeneration.

That's why I designed a holistic research kit which allows citizen researchers to monitor and map seagrass meadows. Based on the protocol for seagrass transects by PROJECT MANAIA, the kit combines instructions for a standardized data collection, easy-to-handle equipment and a platform to share the data freely and connect citizen researchers with scientists.

This allows us to collect a large amount of comparable data across broad geographic areas over an extended period of time, which would be to costly and time-consuming for scientists to achieve just by themselves.
By including non-professionals through citizen research, the awareness for this important topic can be raised, as well as it fosters scientific literacy and community engagement.

Thanks to:
My supervisor Prof. Sebastian Feucht at University of Applied Sciences Berlin, PROJECT MANAIA with all crew members & everyone who's been supporting me along the way!