Other citizen science approaches for water and soil monitoring

An explicative video where users can take more ideas to report the impact of FF Industries in soil and water, like their role as sample collectors, biomonitoring, georeferenced visual inspections or the utility of professional field proves.

Water biomonitoring

Biomonitoring can serve as another citizen science approach to assessing water quality that does not require any sensors but uses living organisms to learn about environmental conditions and state. It is considered as cheap and reliable method. Usually, citizen science initiatives rely on bioindicators like macroinvertebrates. Different taxonomic group can be identified using user-friendly tools and apps. For instance, a presence of sensitive to pollutions species like mayflies and caddisflies indicate clean water, while pollution-tolerant species like leeches states unhealthy water. Freshwaterwatch initiative introduces guidelines and tools for citizen science monitoring freshwater ecosystems, including their biomonitoring. Besides fauna indicators, the training also covers collecting data on algae and macrophytes, which are another group of organisms whose presence or absence indicates freshwater quality. 

Soil biomonitoring

The fossil fuel industry has a negative impact on soil health and terrestrial ecosystems. For instance, coal mining directly damages land and destroys entire landscapes by removing the topsoil and scraping the ground. Additionally, it indirectly pollutes the soil with toxic byproducts such as heavy metals. Citizen science initiative Prepsoil provides a framework for soil monitoring in Europe. For an easy soil salinity monitoring use electrical conductivity (EC) meter. The best way to test soil for heavy metals is to send a soil sample to the soil lab. Disturbance of land ecosystems can be assessed by invasive species monitoring and collection of data on their occurrence by ‘participatory mapping’.