Co-Design Workshop





On Friday 17th April, the COBWEB Co-design Workshop took place at Y Plas in Machynlleth. Our seven co-design projects came together to learn how to use COBWEB to create and manage their own crowdsourced surveys.

These co-design projects, funded by COBWEB, are an exciting phase of the project, bringing together a wealth of local expertise in environmental projects, a vibrant community of volunteers and communities, and the expertise of the COBWEB researchers and developers. Working together, this co-design activity will run discreet projects that will contribute to the development, pilot data collection and the uptake of COBWEB project outputs.

The workshop consisted of hands on training in how to use the COBWEB Portal to create a survey and a subsequent data collection form. Our co-design project leads were then shown how to access their form on a mobile device using the COBWEB app. This enables the collection of relevant environmental data, such as land use/land cover, biological and flooding data. Discussions surrounding security, data privacy and creating ‘fit-for-purpose’ surveys were facilitated by the COBWEB team with technical staff providing additional support.

The data collected by the projects will be used locally to help the management of both land and sea, ranging from understanding individual woodlands to monitoring and controlling Japanese Knotweed for the whole of Snowdonia National Park.

Read on to find out more about each project.

Outward Bound Trust at Aberdyfi

The Outward Bound Trust (OBT) will be embedding COBWEB into their ongoing activities with young people around the Dyfi Biosphere area, engaging with biological monitoring, flooding, and the verification of land cover maps generated from aerial photography and satellites. As part of the John Muir Award, OBT will work with 10 schools leading groups of young people on expeditions, walks and canoe trips to collecting environmental data using COBWEB technologies. Applying the four challenges of the John Muir Award, OBT will ‘Discover’ the habitat of the biosphere, ‘Explore’ these habitats in detail; use the data collected to help us ‘Conserve’ these habitats and the results of what has been recorded will be ‘Shared’ with participants, policy makers and others.

Ysgol Bro Hyddgen

Ysgol Bro Hyddgen, the local school in Machynlleth, will undertake a series of biological monitoring and habitat identification activities in the Ynys-hir RSPB reserve during the summer of 2015.  The school will work closely with the RSPB to develop a series of curriculum relevant activities using the COBWEB portal as the means of data collection and delivery. The students will play a very important role within the COBWEB project.  Their feedback on the usability of the app, the portal and the learning resources will feed directly into the development process, helping COBWEB to enhance the service and make it accessible and useful to all citizens.

RSPB Reserve at Ynys-hir

The RSPB, with funding from the Environment Agency and advice from CCW, began a long term project to undertake a managed retreat and convert an area of lowland grass into upper saltmarsh habitat. RSPB will train and work with citizens to survey vegetation in quadrats along line transects across the saltmarsh. The records will be used as baseline data as part of the investigation of the reversion process.

In addition, schools, community groups and local citizens will survey plant life on a peatbog. This will be the first time this area has been mapped in such detail, providing RSPB Ynys-hir with invaluable baseline data. The information will feed into management decisions on water levels and invasive species control.

Snowdonia National Park Authority

The Snowdonia National Park Authority (SNPA) are utilising COBWEB technologies to inform the creation of a management and control strategy for Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica) within the National Park. This project will use remote sensing technologies to identify likely locations of Japanese Knotweed across large geographic areas. These results will then be validated and updated using data collected by citizen scientists and SNPA wardens, using the COBWEB app. This work will be used to assess the accuracy of remote sensing classifications and their utility in understanding the distribution and spread of invasive non-native species. Furthermore this process will be used to understand the accuracy of the data collected by volunteers.

Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre

The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales’ Living Seas marine team based at the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre will be carrying out land and sea based monitoring of marine megafauna (dolphins, whales etc.) over a wide area. COBWEB is being used to collect monitoring data in a faster, more systematic approach in order to migrate from traditional paper records, which are laborious with regards to data collection as well as data entry into bespoke database.

Penparcau Community Forum

A project to recruit citizen scientists from Penparcau, Aberystwyth, to record observations of butterflies and their food resources using COBWEB along with environmental sensors (weather stations) to add value and validate the observations. The data collected will help to inform local management plans and increase interest and understanding of the importance of butterflies (and other pollinators) to the health of Wales’ natural environment. Data will be shared with biological record organisations (National Biodiversity Network, Local Records Centres) and utilised by Welsh Government to assess the suitability of modelled large scale pollinator resource maps to inform a range of policy questions.

Coetiroedd Dyfi Woodlands

Coetiroedd Dyfi Woodlands will be engaging local communities in monitoring woodland flora and fauna. A series of opportunities will enable students, local citizens and tourists to engage in three woodlands within the Dyfi Biosphere. Aided by wildlife experts, citizens will become familiar with identifying specific species and how to record them on their mobile devices using COBWEB. This will empower them to go out into the community and share their actions in other woodlands across the Dyfi Biosphere.

Date: 

Friday, April 17, 2015 – 09:00

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