OneAquaHealth IEEE Global Hackathon

Join the OneAquaHealth IEEE Global Hackathon 2026 ! A worldwide call to innovators, creators, and problem‑solvers - the IEEE and OneAquaHealth project invite participants from across the globe to co‑create breakthrough solutions for healthier urban freshwater ecosystems. This global hackathon unites AI enthusiasts, environmental thinkers, designers, developers, researchers, and citizen‑science champions to transform real environmental and community data into tools that protect biodiversity, strengthen resilience, and improve human wellbeing. Whether you’re passionate about AI for good, urban water health, biodiversity, climate resilience, or digital innovation, this is your moment to make an impact on a global stage. Build. Collaborate. Innovate - with the world watching. Be part of a global movement shaping smarter, healthier, more sustainable cities. To register for the hackathon, visit: https://oneaquahealth-ieee-hackathon.devpost.com/rules ***Coming Up Next on June 12, 2026: Session 1 - Introducing the OneAquaHealth Project*** Explore the mission, technical tracks, and innovation opportunities behind the IEEE OneAquaHealth Global Hackathon. To register for the webinar, visit: https://www.oneaquahealth.eu/introducing-oneaquahealth-project/

ECSA's Aquatic Working Group webinar series

ECSA's Aquatic Working Group is launching a webinar series, with the first one coming on the 21st of May! The first webinar is titled "Creating a European Network of Citizen Science Projects on Freshwater Macroinvertebrates: Towards Comparison and Harmonization" - it will host a number of experts presenting their work from major European based projects focused on the topic. The listed projects are Riverfly Project (UK), CS Stream Index (CSSI) & (SSIS) (Ireland), RiuNet (Spain), and FLOW (Germany). Anyone interested can join us at the zoom link provided, and a recording of the webinar will be made available on ECSA's YouTube channel. See you soon and stay tuned for more!

ScienceUs Info Day: From Knowledge to Action for Biodiversity

Join us on September 23 at 10:00 AM for our ScienceUs Info Day. This session on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services will showcase three inspiring initiatives from the SEED phase of ScienceUs. Among them: Acqua Sorgente, introducing their project on spring water monitoring together with Alpine Clubs. Also connect with: Night Owl 2.0 - Associació Taxus ¡Por otra Alimentación, Jóvenes en Acción! - Sustainable Living Foundation With the Infoday we give inspirations, how to overcome “learned helplessness” in biodiversity action with citizen science approaches: Discover how citizen science can mobilize communities, build resilience, and turn awareness into tangible impact for ecosystems. Take part in this exchange, connect with stakeholders, and explore how collaborative research can drive change for biodiversity.

Citizen Science for Water Conference

Join us 3-5 June in Delft, the Netherlands for the Citizen Science for Water Conference. For this inaugural CS4Water conference, we will focus on freshwater systems, diving into engaging workshop sessions, exploring innovative research, and connecting international water and citizen science experts. The conference will focus on the crucial role citizen science plays within water resource monitoring, management and governance as well as community-led actions. The conference will bring together experienced citizen science practitioners and newcomers from both the Global North and Global South who are interested in exploring how citizen science can contribute to water management.

Wetland Watchers workshop - Empowering Citizen Science for Climate Action

The Wetland Watchers workshop is an opportunity to bring together various researchers and stakeholders with a shared interest in wetlands. Invited speakers: Barbara Sowinska-Swierkosz (PL), Milena Holmgren & Juul Limpens (NL), Rosa Arias (ES), Gitte Kragh (DK) Objectives: * Explore the integration of citizen science into wetland and climate research * Share recent findings and technological advancements * Promote collaboration, innovation and public engagement in climate change mitigation efforts. Program 08:30 - 09:00 | Registration and Welcome Coffee Participants arrival and registration Informal networking over coffee 09:00 - 09:15 | Opening Remarks Welcome by the Workshop Organizer – Lorenzo Pugliese and Shubiao Wu Introduction to the Workshop Objectives 09:15 - 10:30 | Citizen Science Research & Methodology (Gitte Kragh) Introduction to citizen science research design and methodologies/interactive session 10:30 - 10:45 | Coffee Break 10:45 - 11:15 | Communication & public engagement (Rosa Arias/online) Effective communication and engagement 11:15 - 12:00 | Education and Awareness (Gitte Kragh) Raising awareness among researchers, volunteers and stakeholders/interactive session 12:00 - 13:00 | Lunch Break 13:00 - 13:30 | Citizen Science in restored wetlands (Barbara Sowińska-Świerkosz) Citizen science task and toolkit in relation to wetland 13:30 - 14:00 | Citizen Science in the WaterLAND project (Milena Holmgren & Juul Limpens) The WaterLand co-creation method Action sites 14:00 - 14:15 | Coffee Break 14:15 - 15:15 | Citizen science in wetland restoration: overcoming barriers and enhancing methodologies (World café led by Gitte Kragh) Identifying and overcoming barriers Enhancing data collection methodologies Collaborative frameworks: building partnerships between researchers, local communities, and policymakers 15:15 - 15:30 | Closing Remarks and Future Directions (Shubiao Wu/Lorenzo Pugliese) Organiser: Wet Horizons / Aarhus University

PREP4BLUE Webinar series: Planning for Citizen Participation in Mission Ocean & Waters

PREP4BLUE is running a spring/summer webinar series titled “Planning for Citizen Participation in Mission Ocean & Waters.” Over five one-hour sessions, participants will learn how to design a project, work package, or programme of activities in alignment with the citizen engagement targets of the EU Mission: Restore Our Ocean and Waters By 2030 (or Mission Ocean). The webinars are designed as bite-sized, targeted sessions that will equip the audience with key information and knowledge of where/how to access more details or expertise. The webinar series is aimed primarily at anyone applying for Mission Ocean funding under Horizon Europe. It will also be of interest to current Mission-funded projects, as well as those working on citizen engagement in marine and freshwater-related activities across the NGO, industry, research, community, citizen science groups, and local government sectors. The European Commission’s ambition in relation to citizen engagement with Mission Ocean falls under a handful of clear themes. Each of the webinars in this series is structured around one of these themes. Overall, the series will equip the audience with the knowledge required to orient project proposals and restoration, anti-pollution, and other related activities towards the Mission’s targets in relation to citizen engagement. More information for the webinar series schedule and registration is available here: https://prep4blue.eu/events/prep4blue-webinar-series-planning-for-citizen-participation-in-mission-ocean-waters/

Citizen science in the dialogue between science and society

The WomenWaterWatch project will hold a webinar with Simona Cerrato, communication and community manager at ECSA and the European Citizen Science project. CONCEPT: Citizen science has the potential to bring together science, policy makers, and society as a whole in an impactful way. In this process, communication is key. But what do we mean by “communication”? In this webinar we will explore how dialogical and participatory communication, where all parties are actively involved, is strategic both for research and for society. We will take a journey through science in recent decades to grasp its rapid and incredible transformations and understand how science communication has welcomed and interpreted them. And we will see how citizen science can be a truly revolutionary approach to democratise science and make it truly inclusive and open to diversity. Participants will explore how dialogical and participatory communication is strategic both for research and for society.

Water-ForCE H2020 - Citizen Science for the CAL/VAL of satellite aquatic products

In situ data acquisition is an expensive process that needs high-frequency and broad spatial coverage to be fully useful in remote sensing calibration and/or validation exercises. An important new source of spatially intensive data acquisition, the crowd sourcing carried out inside of Citizen Science initiatives, has been developed in previous projects within the EU by, among other things, the development of tools and citizen observatories solutions. We will hear the experiences of Citizen Science tools developers and users and Citizen Science experts, as a basis for discussion during our expert panel time afterwards. Our aim is to fully explore the possibilities of Citizen Science for calibration and validation of Copernicus water quality and quantity products, focused in the identification of: Opportunities/potential for Cal/Val Gaps & problems Identified Needs Data Quality, format and uncertainties

Webinar: Blueprint for reducing plastic pollution in rivers through citizen science

Rivers are critical to all life on the planet. They are a source of drinking water and a vital ecosystem for many species. Clean rivers are key. In most recent years, it becomes clear that our rivers are polluted with plastics. Scientific evidence shows that these polluted rivers also contribute to the worldwide plastic pollution of our oceans. In this webinar, we will present the blueprint of our Clean Rivers project and explain how to set a project that focusses on tackling river litter pollution. The program will be interactive to share experiences, knowledge and future collaborations. The program is targeted at non-governmental organisations, policy makers and advisors at European, regional and local level, politicians, waterboards, institutes, universities and companies. Join us for plastic free rivers in 2030!

BioMARAtó

From the 1st of June until the 30th of September, the provinces of Barcelona, ​​Girona, and Tarragona will participate in a Bioblitz called "BioMARató". The region that gets the most underwater observations, detects more invasive and rare species or gets the most participants will win. This event is part of the City Nature Challenge (CNC), an international friendly competition of naturalistic observations where cities worldwide will compete with each other. Participate on your own or sign up for one of the free activities on the Catalan coast (beaches in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, Costa Daurada, and Costa Brava)

Monitoring groundwater in Limpopo Province through citizen science

On 2 March 2021 (11:00-12:00 CET), Jaqui Goldin, from the Centre for UNESCO Groundwater, will present the latest findings from a groundwater-monitoring citizen science project based in the Hout Catchment, Limpopo Province – one of the poorest provinces in South Africa. In this project, citizen scientists capture data on groundwater levels and rainfall, putting it onto a smartphone from where it is uploaded to the web. The data is then available to the Department of Water and Sanitation, and others, who are otherwise unable to access groundwater information in remote wells. After the presentation, Jaqui will answer questions about the project. Attendance is free, and the event will be held in English.

Discovering the unexplored deep marine environment

Deep underwater neutrino telescopes as KM3NeT measure neutrino and environmental events that constitute “noise” for the neutrino searches. These environmental events range from biological bioluminescence to acoustic signals from sea mammals. Citizens can support KM3NeTs scientists to increase the efficiency in the neutrino detection algorithms, providing input that will be crucial for two scientific tasks: the classification of noise types, and the identification of the frequency range and typical length of noise signals. The output of the citizen science activity will serve as a basis for training machine learning algorithms, which will automatically identify and classify the noise sources, thus monitoring the noise with an unprecedented detail. At the same time, citizens will have the opportunity to gain a greater insight of the unexplored deep marine environment. In the framework of REINFORCE, time sequences of the optical counting rates on the KM3NeT “eyes” will be made available to the general public in order to monitor ambient bioluminescence, and citizens will be invited to classify in a systematic way the various types of waveforms observed. Furthermore, in order to involve in this activity also visually-impaired citizen scientists, the “ears” of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope will also be exploited by utilising the time sequences of the acoustical signals detected. Both sound and visual data for the bioluminescence and the acoustic signals will be produced. The webinar aims to give an overview of the Deep Sea Hunters Large Scale Citizen Science demonstrator and how it will be implemented in order to engage citizens in the scientific research, showcasing the tasks that citizens will be asked to perform and how their input will be fundamental to explore the environment of the deep sea below 1000m depth in which humanity has little experience so far. Who should attend? Potential citizen scientists Neutrino researchers and academics Members of the physics and marine community You will learn: How citizens can play an active role in the advance of ground-breaking research How a deep underwater neutrino telescope works How REINFORCE demonstrator about Deep Sea Hunters will be developed How the project will work to include diverse and underrepresented groups in science Agenda 15:00 - 15:10: Welcome and introduction - Paschal Coyle, CPPM, Marseille 15:10 - 15:20: Neutrinos and KM3NeT - Gwenhael de Wasseige, APC, Paris 15:20 - 15:30: Deep Sea Hunters on Zooniverse - Remy Le Breton, APC, Paris 15:30 - 15:40: Bioluminescence - Severine Martini, Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, Marseille 15:40 - 15:50: Submarine Intelligent Listening into KM3EnT & Abyss - Herve Glotin, Computer Science & Systems Lab., CNRS, Toulon 15:50 - 16:00: Q&A and wrap-up