The celebration took place in Rome last Saturday 18 November, in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella centenary of the National Research Council (CNR).
The event was an opportunity to confer the “CNR Award for Citizen Science: Guglielmo Marconi Library”, established for the purpose of enhance and support public engagement and citizen involvement initiatives and scientists in collaborative research.
Award winner, the edited by Silvia Merlino, researcher ofInstitute of Marine Sciences of Lerici (ISMAR-CNR) and Marina Locritani, researcher at the Lerici branch ofNational Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
The initiative, born in 2013 from the joint efforts of CNR and INGV as a School-Work Alternation (PCTO) proposal, addresses the problem ofimpact of human-produced waste on the marine environment involving local communities every year through the active participation of citizens, in particular school children and young people, as well as researchers, associations and operators in the fishing sector.
The objective of SeaCleaner is to collect information on the presence, distribution, quantity, type and impact of waste in protected or difficult-to-access coastal areas to develop standardized intervention protocols that are comparable with those already existing. The collection of data of this kind, in fact, in addition to having obvious scientific relevance, is an important tool for information and raising awareness of the population involved in the sea monitoring program and related activities.
As reported in the motivation for recognition, “SeaCleaner has managed to capture the entire spectrum of the Citizen Science paradigm: diffusion of scientific principles, active participation of citizens as active researchers spread across the territory, environmental communication, research and validation of the concrete result, originality and creativity in peer-to-peer involvement -peer of all subjects”.
The event was an opportunity to confer the “CNR Award for Citizen Science: Guglielmo Marconi Library”, established for the purpose of enhance and support public engagement and citizen involvement initiatives and scientists in collaborative research.
Award winner, the edited by Silvia Merlino, researcher ofInstitute of Marine Sciences of Lerici (ISMAR-CNR) and Marina Locritani, researcher at the Lerici branch ofNational Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
The initiative, born in 2013 from the joint efforts of CNR and INGV as a School-Work Alternation (PCTO) proposal, addresses the problem ofimpact of human-produced waste on the marine environment involving local communities every year through the active participation of citizens, in particular school children and young people, as well as researchers, associations and operators in the fishing sector.
The objective of SeaCleaner is to collect information on the presence, distribution, quantity, type and impact of waste in protected or difficult-to-access coastal areas to develop standardized intervention protocols that are comparable with those already existing. The collection of data of this kind, in fact, in addition to having obvious scientific relevance, is an important tool for information and raising awareness of the population involved in the sea monitoring program and related activities.
As reported in the motivation for recognition, “SeaCleaner has managed to capture the entire spectrum of the Citizen Science paradigm: diffusion of scientific principles, active participation of citizens as active researchers spread across the territory, environmental communication, research and validation of the concrete result, originality and creativity in peer-to-peer involvement -peer of all subjects”.
Photos: The researchers Silvia Merlino (ISMAR-CNR, left) and Marina Locritani (INGV, right) with the CNR Prize for Citizen Science: Guglielmo Marconi Library