Jakkur Citizen Science project wanted to engage with college students to evaluate water quality, flora and fauna around Jakkur lake and build a long-term relationship and sense of responsibility between the students and the lake, encouraging a regular engagement with the lake and elaborate on the value of close monitoring and data collection.
Seema is planning to engage with college students to evaluate water quality, flora and fauna around Jakkur lake and build a longterm relationship and sense of responsibility between the students and the lake. Her approach is to go beyond 1 day volunteer events but encourage a regular engagement with the lake and elaborate on the value of close monitoring and data collection.
By Seema Sukhani, IISc CST and Dr. Annapurna Kamath, Jala Poshan Trust
Project Start date: April 2019
Contact:
Seema Sukhani, IISc CST: seemasukhani@iisc.ac.in
Status report & updates:
In the last 8 months over 10 students were called from several graduate colleges from Bangalore and trained in various water quality assessment procedures to take this project forward. While managing long term participation of students as citizen scientists to help monitor the variationin water quality in different seasons of the year was not successful, a few became a part of this project and helped in mapping the lake as well. Citizens have been engaged in successfully monitoring the water quality in the lake since August without fail. Mapping the drivers of change in the catchment of the water body and their relationship with water quality has just been started. Bird surveys have been conducted by Jalaposhana.
The project is successfully completed.