We are big fans of citizen science! Of course, science is always cool, and STEM/STEAM projects are an increasing part of everyone’s work and school experiences. So understanding how science works is not just fun, but a good way to understand what is going on in the world around us all.

So we are sharing some neat science you can do, contributing toward large projects, and learning new things. Maybe you can use this today; maybe you will save it for later. As long as you enjoy some exploration and learning new things – citizen science is for you! And it is definitely something you can use to bring some good programming to your library.

This week we are looking at landslides. It is a project from NASA! “Landslides affect nearly all countries, but we still don’t have a clear worldwide picture on where and when landslides occur. Citizen scientists like you can help NASA scientists to build the largest open global landslide catalog, the Cooperative Open Online Landslide Repository (COOLR), using our web application Landslide Reporter.

Our goal is to open access to and quantity of landslide data on a global scale to save lives and property. Your reports are key towards guiding awareness of landslide hazards for improving scientific modeling and emergency response.”

From NASA’s website:

“Collect Landslides and Advance NASA Science

Landslides cause billions of dollars in infrastructural damage and thousands of deaths every year worldwide. Data on past landslide events guides future disaster prevention, but to date we do not have a global picture of exactly when and where landslides occur. NASA is building the biggest open global landslide inventory to address this problem, and the only way we can do this is with the help of citizen scientists like you!

The Cooperative Open Online Landslide Repository, or COOLR, is an open platform where scientists and citizen scientists can share landslide reports. See all landslide data from COOLR with other scientific data using the Landslide Viewer application. Want to contribute? Add to COOLR using our citizen science application, Landslide Reporter.

With more hands and your help, we can complete the global picture of landslides to prepare for and protect against future disasters.”

“Why are citizen scientists needed?

Our team at NASA has been collecting landslides around the world since 2007 in the Global Landslide Catalog (GLC). The GLC provides new insight into landslide hazards around the world, but it has been a manual and very time consuming process that is hard to maintain. In fact, if we sum up all the hours it has taken over the past 10 years to compile this inventory it would total over 140 days, 84 work weeks, or 1.6 years of straight landslide cataloging! The inventory is also challenged by biases affecting where and when landslide information is available (for more details please see the Publications).

We are appealing to the global citizen science community to help advance our knowledge of where and when landslides are happening around the world by adding reports to fill in the gaps in our data, creating the Cooperative Open Online Landslide Repository (COOLR). Citizen scientists are people like you who can use their knowledge to advance scientific research and grow our collective understanding of this pervasive hazard. Citizen science can help:

1. Find information from many different sources, and with as little bias as possible, including local first-hand accounts, reports in other languages, and points from other inventories for a robust landslide repository
2. Collect recent landslides and keep the repository up-to-date
3. Create more awareness and education about landslides as a natural process and natural/man-made hazard

With the help of citizen scientists like you, we can improve both the quantity and quality of open landslide data to provide a clearer picture of how landslides are shaping our world.”

This would be interesting to bring into your library, and share with your school. Working on a project with NASA could help to spur the interest of kids in all sorts of STEM work!

What could you do to build interest from your library? We have a few ideas to help you get started:

• Set up a display of natural science books, or other books with geology, rocks, mountains, or similar topics
• Have students look up the risk factors for landslides. If one happens near you, what should you do? Spend some time talking about safety and first aid skills.
• Are there landslides in your area? Where are the closest landslides to you? Give students the materials to make maps of landslides.
• What kinds of materials are often found in landslides? Bring some materials on geology, so people can work on identifying different kinds of rocks and other materials.
• Use cameras to take pictures of different rocks, or other things in nature (plants, insects, etc.), or use colored pencils or other materials to draw rocks and other natural materials students can find outside.
• Look at the online maps created in this project. What other online maps can you find, with different kinds of information? How can you evaluate whether or not an online map is providing the best information on a subject?