Environmental citizen science smartphone apps (applications) have become increasingly popular and available in the last decade. As a college professor, it’s rare to have an opportunity to do something that covers two categories at the same time (teaching and research) and is impactful all on its own. During the pandemic, instructors all over the world scrambled to find meaningful projects that could be done remotely. The free smartphone app from National Geographic, Marine Debris Tracker, allows the integration of environmental data collection with classroom pedagogy and works for both in-person class and online class formats. This paper will highlight the findings from a semester long class project to examine environmental waste in students’ respective communities. Marine Debris Tracker allows users to download their data in an excel format that can then be analyzed by several factors such as classification of waste, time of day it was tracked, and geo-location of that waste. This allows for complex analysis of waste across various zip codes in a given county, but also in a state, country, and even globally. Furthermore, students learn valuable environmental data collection skills while also contributing to key environmental justice data repositories that can help to inform policies in their communities. Doing this semester-long project in a college classroom setting not only leads to valuable publishable research findings and an impactful classroom learning experience, but most importantly, it can also empower a growing movement of citizen scientists to take action in their communities against environmental injustices.

Authors:
Evelyn Alvarez, California State University, Los Angeles, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Evelyn Alvarez is an assistant professor of environmental health science at California State University, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on highlighting underrepresented narratives in the climate change dialogue through citizen science tools.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evelyn-natalia-alvarez-76b1769

Additional website of interest
https://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/dr-evelyn-alvarez-mph

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