Estonian-Latvian cooperation in water body research – spring activities of the CoCoRiCo project

The melting of ice on the water has left the participants of the CoCoRiCo project very busy. On February 20, Estonian and Latvian teachers gathered in Valmiera, preparing themselves for the upcoming fieldwork period in various workshops. The aim of the seminar was to collect input for adapting teaching materials to the curricula. To adapt the observation methodology in order to better integrate them with national curricula by collecting working practices from various teachers participating in the project.

In the first part of the seminar, the Latvian Institute of Hydroecology introduced the pan-European amateur science campaign “Plastic Pirates”. As part of the campaign, students will help scientists collect data on plastic pollution in water bodies, as a large part of plastic waste reaches the marine environment through rivers. Therefore, one of the main goals of the campaign is to create connections among students so that they understand the actual amount of waste pollution carried to the sea by rivers. You can see one of the tasks of the Plastic Pirates campaign in the video below.

In the second half of the seminar, Maria Ivanova, coordinator of the Baltic Sea Project at Tartu Nature House, introduced various digital tools that can be used in the study of water bodies. In her presentation, Maira paid special attention to the iNaturalist application, through which the entered data reaches the researchers’ desktops.