Citizen Science and Data Integration for Understanding Marine Litter
Protecting the ocean is essential for the sustainability of the planet. Oceans provide food and livelihood for human populations, host vast biodiversity and ecosystems and provide climate regulatory services. However, due to the vastness of the oceans, monitoring ocean pollution and health is logistically challenging and expensive. This is particularly true for plastics. In the last 50 years, global production of plastics has increased more than 22-fold, and only an estimated 9% of plastics produced have been recycled ; 1 Moreover, there is a lack of information on the volume of plastic that is currently in the ocean, where that plastic accumulates, and the process of how plastic breaks down into micro plastic as well as a lack of information on how plastic affects ecosystem or human health. Answering these questions requires new ways of collecting and analyzing data. Citizen science and complementary activities, like targeted beach clean-ups, not only provide a cost effective mechanism for collecting data, but also provide an opportunity to increase awareness and action on issues relating to marine litter. A consortium of partners including UN Environment and the Wilson Center are partnering on Earth Challenge 2020 , 2 the largest globally coordinated citizen science campaign to date, to bring people together to better understand marine litter.
Environment
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Artificial Intelligence issues occupy a growing share of the Congressional agenda; every day, staff advise Members on policy pertaining to the transformative set of technologies collectively known as artificial intelligence. We offer a seminar series to assist both lawmakers and aides in being well-versed in the complex subjects at hand.
Cybersecurity issues occupy a growing share of the Congressional agenda; every day, staff advise Members on digital policy. It is critically important that both lawmakers and aides be well-versed in the complex subjects at hand. The core of the Lab is a six-week seminar series that introduces participants to foundational topics in cybersecurity: how networks work and what defends them, key bad actors and their tools, the roles of different sectors in preventing or responding to threats.
The Global Mosquito Alert Consortium is a new citizen science initiative that aims to leverage networks of scientists and volunteers for the global surveillance and control of mosquito species known to carry the following diseases: Zika, yellow fever, chikungunya, dengue, malaria, and the West Nile Virus.
To communicate the scope and scale of the debt problem, we created a game that showcases contemporary policy and uses Congressional Budget Office data to reflect on the relative impact to the national debt. Set your own goals, and see how quickly you can get us to a fiscally sound horizon. Created through a partnership between the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings.
Earth Challenge 2020 will engage millions of global citizens to aggregate and collect more than one billion data points in areas including air quality, water quality, biodiversity, pollution, and human health. Through Earth Challenge 2020, citizen science volunteers will learn about their local conditions, and leverage information to inspire collaborative action and influence policy decisions.
