Though the bee gets most of the credit, there are seven different categories of pollinators in North America, but keeping tabs on them is difficult. Insight is an app developed by Cameron Cartiere and Geoffery Campbell of Border Free Bees in 2019, a Canada-based public art and awareness non-profit focusing on bees. Insight aims to engage citizen scientists in pollinator research and conservation by recording pollinator sightings on their app. The app teaches users about different pollinators— such as the bee, moth, fly, and wasp— and how to identify species. Users can record on the app which pollinator they saw and the location, and it is added to Insight’s database of pollinator data. The catalogue of pollinators is only meant for use in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, but considering that researchers utilize this data to get a better grasp on pollinator species’ populations within North America, all data by concerned citizen scientists are welcome. A common issue for research for bees is already abundant in highly developed and wealthy areas like Canada and the United States, so it will be interesting to see if this app will have a more diverse range of data available outside of North America.
“Insight.” Insight Citizen Science. Accessed July 24, 2020. https://insightcitizenscience.com/
Categories
Aesthetic/Leisure, Citizen Science, Ecological Monitoring, Psychology
Air Pollution Robot
The dangers of air pollution to human health are well documented, though the traditional methodology of collecting and reporting on sample lags behind the need to keep abreast and regulate air pollution in a meaningful amount of time. The use of drones and robots have been identified by researchers as resources that can be tweaked […]
Artificial Life, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Ecological Monitoring, Industry/Natural Commodities, Lifestyle, Monitoring
Telematic Rivers
Erica Kermani’s artwork seeks to answer a central question: if rivers were seeing an equal, living entity, would humans take issues like climate change threatening them more seriously? In his year-long art exhibition in 2017, Kermani, in collaboration with Diana Salcedo & Jeana Chesnik, created a new forum of interaction between humans and rivers to […]
Climate Change, Ecological Monitoring, Lifestyle, Monitoring, Pollution, Visual Technologies
Co-occupied Boundaries
Art is easily found in nature but rarely is what considered art today inherently natural. The concept of co-occupied mediums that serve to be both functional for nature and aesthetically pleasing to people is being actively explored by Asya Ilgun and Phil Ayres, from the CITAstudio at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In […]
Climate Change, Ecological Monitoring, Lifestyle, Monitoring, Pollution, Visual Technologies