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September 2019 GLOBE News Brief

Sep 30, 2019

September 2019 GLOBE News Brief

25th Anniversary GLOBE Annual Meeting Will be Held in Washington, D.C., USA, in July 2020!

GLOBE Needs Your Help with Planning!

The Smithsonian Institution (the “Castle”), Washington, D.C.

The 25th Anniversary GLOBE Annual Meeting will be held from 12-16 July 2020 in Washington, D.C., USA.

GLOBE Community: GLOBE needs your help planning the science protocol trainings. Please complete this survey to let us know: 1) your favorite GLOBE protocol, and 2) one GLOBE protocol that you would like to learn. Your responses will help shape the trainings during the meeting.

Keep checking back here for updates about the meeting!

News

Ready for the 2020 GLOBE

International Virtual Science Symposium (IVSS)?

Informational Webinar on 30 October 2019 – Reports Due 10 March 2020

Are you ready for the 2020 GLOBE International Virtual Science Symposium (IVSS)? The due date for projects will be 10 March 2020, so mark your calendars!

The IVSS is a way for primary through undergraduate students from all GLOBE countries to showcase their hard work. With GLOBE, students explore the natural world through hands‑on investigations in their own communities, sparking their curiosity and interest in science. This often leads to inquiries that help solve real-world problems and further understanding of our global environment.

IVSS Informational Webinar

The GLOBE Implementation Office will host an informational webinar about the 2020 IVSS at 10:00 a.m. MT/12:00 p.m. ET/4:00 p.m. UTC, on Wednesday, 30 October. (A recording will be available after the webinar.)

To access the webinar, click here.

Join the New Community-led “GLOBE Water Bodies Intensive Observation Period” Taking Place 23-27 September 2019

Following regional collaboration at GLOBE’s 23rd Annual Meeting, the community is leading an exciting new event: “GLOBE Water Bodies Intensive Observation Period” (IOP), which will begin on 23 September and run through 27 September. All GLOBE countries, in all GLOBE regions, are invited to join in this data collection and research endeavor.

During the IOP, participants will identify a water body close to their schools or towns, and collect and enter data based on one of the following GLOBE Hydrosphere Bundles (Water Quality Bundle, Rivers and Lakes Bundle, Ocean Protocol Bundle), which includes hydrosphere protocols (water temperature, water pH, turbidity, salinity, dissolved oxygen) and atmosphere protocols (air temperature, rainfall, rain pH, relative humidity).

The overall goals of the event are to:

· connect to, and collaborate with, other GLOBE community members around data related to water bodies;

· connect to community issues, and provide possible solutions to those issues, using GLOBE materials; and

· connect to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG); specifically, SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation.

The Global Sustainable Development Goals is a 17-point plan to end poverty, combat environmental changes and fight injustice and inequality. It was adopted by 193 world leaders at a United Nations Summit in 2015 and came into force on 01 January 2016. (To view the correlations between the SDGs and The GLOBE Program, click here.)

For more information on the IOP, you can:

· attend the Water Bodies IOP Webinar on 10 September, at 7:00 a.m. MT, (to register, click here);

· go to the Water Bodies IOP website, by clicking here; and/or

· check with your respective Regional Coordination Office, or contact Mark Brettenny at: mark@globe-africa.org

Join the September GLOBE Mission Mosquito

Education and Citizen Science Webinars

GLOBE educators and citizen scientists (of all ages) – you are invited to join the following GLOBE Mission Mosquito (GMM) September webinars:

GMM Education Webinar #11 “Back to School with GLOBE Mission Mosquito” – Wednesday, 04 September (8:00 p.m. ET/12:00 a.m. UTC): Find out how teachers around the world are integrating the GLOBE Mission Mosquito tool into their teaching and in after-school activities. Jeff Bouwman and Erquinio Taborda will discuss "Best Practices" for engaging students in both formal and informal educational settings.

To register for the webinar, click here.

GMM Citizen Science Webinar #9 “Behind the Scenes: What Happens to Your Data?” – Wednesday, 25 September (2:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. UTC): During the webinar, Dr. Helen Amos, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, will discuss data quality and give hints on how to ensure that your reported data is the best it can be. A question and answer session will follow.

To register for the webinar, click here.

To learn more about the GLOBE Mission Mosquito campaign, and to view archived webinars, click here.

Congratulations to the Winner of the July 2019 Trees Around the GLOBE Student Research Campaign Tree Height IOP

The GLOBE Program would like to congratulate the winner of the July 2019 Trees Around the GLOBE Student Research Campaign Tree Height Intensive Observation Period (IOP): Y-Hsien Lee of The National Kinmen Senior High School from the Taiwan Partnership, with 126 measurements in 31 days.

IOPs are focused periods of time where participants are encouraged to collect large amounts of data and enter it in the GLOBE database. Data that is collected during an IOP will provide other GLOBE students, scientists, researchers, and educators large amounts of concentrated data over a short period of time. This can also be referred to as "Data Density." Ground-based data density can serve as way to help validate data coming from satellites and airborne instruments.

To learn more about the Trees Around the GLOBE campaign, click here.

To check out the campaign IOP page, click here.

GLOBE Congratulates Top July 2019 Trees Around the GLOBE

Campaign Measurement Champions

The GLOBE Program would like to congratulate the top most active Trees Around the GLOBE Student Research Campaign participants taking at least 10 measurements for tree height, greenings, and land cover measurements for the campaign in July!

Tree Height (710 Total Measurements/Observations):

· Y. Lee (Taiwan Partnership)

· E. Taborda Martinez (Columbia)

· G. Simunic (Croatia)

· D. Jang (Republic of Korea)

Greenings (11 Total Measurements/Observations):

· M. Algarni (Saudi Arabia)

Land Cover (731 Total Measurements/Observations):

· Y. Lee (Taiwan Partnership)

· P. Foleta (United States)

· S. Taylor (United States)

Miss the “How to Submit Dust Storm Event Photographs Using

GLOBE Observer” Webinar?

Check Out the Recording and Educational Resources!

If you missed the 06 August webinar “How to Submit Dust Storm Event Photographs Using GLOBE Observer,” presented by NASA GLOBE Clouds Project Scientist Marilé Colón Robles, the recording – and related educational resources – are now available.

The webinar focused on teaching participants how to collect dust storm observations, as well as on educational resources available for use with formal and informal audiences.

Your participation in this endeavor is greatly appreciated – and invaluable. Your observations will be used by scientists to verify satellite observations and see if their models have successfully predicted these dust storms and help scientists alert communities to better prepare for the harmful impacts of these storms.

To watch the recorded webinar, and to search through all of the educational resources, click here.

How Do You Download Dust Observations Reported through GLOBE?

Read This Blog and Find Out!

Citizen scientists from around the world have been reporting dust events using the NASA GLOBE Observer App. In a recent Community Blog, “How to Download Dust Observations Reported through GLOBE,” NASA GLOBE Clouds Project Scientist Marilé Colón Robles offers step-by-step instructions on how to download dust observations via two different options.

Option 1 explains how to download the data to a spreadsheet. Option 2 explains how to download the data to a JSON or GeoJSON fie. (For both options, you need to download clouds data first because dust data are part of the clouds data set, and then filter for observations.)

To read the blog, and explore which option may be best for you, click here.

GLOBE Zika Education and Prevention Project Update

Spotlight on the GLOBE Zika Education and Prevention Project:

Asia and Pacific Region

GLOBE would like to thank the Asia and the Pacific Region for their work on the GLOBE Zika Education and Prevention Project. Countries within the region participating in the project include Australia, India, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nepal, New Zealand, Palau, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Over the last year, these countries have organized 96 country-wide and local mosquito training workshops; trained over 1,400 individuals; and added over 50,000 data points to the GLOBE Observer Mosquito Habitat Mapper (GO MHM) tool.

Since 2018, students within the region participating in the project have submitted 13 research reports to the GLOBE IVSS. Two student teams, one from the Philippines and one from Thailand, were selected to present their IVSS mosquito research at GLOBE’s 23rd Annual Meeting in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

The Thailand student team presents their mosquito research, “Dengue Situation with Different Ecological and Environmental” at the 23rd Annual Meeting.

Conceptual Community-based Engagement Model, the Philippines, GLOBE Zika Education and Prevention Project Student Research

The student team from the Philippines presented a conceptual community engagement model to connect public health officials, community organizations, and community members through communications, trainings, and action plans: “Community based mosquito vector prevention model: conceptual approach to mitigating the risk of mosquito threats through community empowerment and education.” As part of their research, the students collected mosquito data over the course of three days from 15 sites around their school. Using the GO MHM tool, the students identified all 30 mosquito larvae samples as Aedes aegypti.

The community engagement framework would train community members, including students, teachers, and public officials, on how to use the GO MHM tool to collect mosquito data. The goal is to create a community-based model that can be adapted and scaled for more effective targeted mosquito campaigns by training community members on how to use the GO MHM tool to collect mosquito data. In a similar fashion, public health officials would be trained on how to use the tool, and on how to access and retrieve mosquito data from the GLOBE database to create real-time mosquito campaign strategies that are location specific and responsive.

Combating Vector-borne Diseases Story Map: Tackling Shared Challenges in the

United States and France

The GLOBE Zika Education and Prevention Project featured on the vector-borne disease Story Map

The GLOBE community is a part of a larger international effort to educate and train community members on how to prevent mosquito-borne disease. On World Mosquito Day, 20 August 2019, the U.S. Embassy in France unveiled a Story Map that shows the power of international partnerships in global efforts to combat vector-borne diseases. The Story Map highlights the GLOBE Zika Education and Prevention Project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the GO MHM tool, noting the important data observation and collection role of citizen scientists, “NASA’s Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program allows citizens to use the GLOBE Observer app to track and eliminate mosquito habitats, which can help communities take measures to protect themselves against diseases.”

To view the Story Map, featuring partnerships working to combat vector-borne diseases, click here.

To learn more about the GLOBE Zika Education and Prevention Project, click here.