OPAL Community Environment Report

The Open Air Laboratories network, or OPAL, as it quickly became known, was launched in 2007 following a successful application to the Big Lottery Fund It was the first time that Big Lottery funding on this scale had been awarded to academic institutions. The University of Central Lancashire led by Dr Mark Toogood was responsible for understanding public engagement with OPAL. The Open Air Laboratories (OPAL)network is a nationwide partnership comprising of ten universities and five organisations with grants awarded totalling £14.4 million. • Over half a million people have participated in the OPAL programme. OPAL activities are carried out by people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities, including 10,000 people in ‘hard to reach’ communities. • OPAL opens people’s eyes to the natural world. Nearly half (44%) of OPAL survey participants said that this was the first time that they had carried out a nature survey. 90% of participants have learnt something new. • OPAL has the ability to change people’s behaviour. Almost half (43%) of respondents said OPAL had changed the way they thought about the environment and more than a third (37%) said they will change their behaviour towards it. • In addition to raising environmental awareness, OPAL also improves personal well-being by motivating people to spend time outdoors doing something positive, while connecting with people and nature

Applying Citizen Science to Freshwater Ecosystem Restoration

Interest in citizen science is growing globally as environmental degradation continues, information needs increase and value of stronger relationships between the science community and public is recognised. How community volunteers participate in citizen science ranges from solely collecting environmental data to being fully engaged in project design and delivery. In New Zealand, community groups lead diverse environmental restoration projects. Responding to an online questionnaire, 137 groups (from a total of 296) reported carrying out their own monitoring to measure environmental change. While 98 of 239 groups reported an interest in monitoring water quality in the future, current freshwater monitoring activities were reported as limited (33 of 143 groups). Current monitoring centred mostly on stream macroinvertebrate counts. Three case studies are presented that outline how community groups have engaged in collecting water quality data. In contrast, a strong culture of volunteer water quality monitoring exists where programmes are designed to educate participants while also providing data for fundamental research, e.g. in the USA, and for government agency-led environmental decision-making. To encourage wider participation of communities, professional scientists and government agencies in citizen science, principles underpinning the development and implementation of long-term volunteer monitoring programmes are outlined. Stronger community participation in monitoring has the potential to improve both scientific and environmental literacy while building more complete data sets describing trends in freshwater resources. Furthermore, in New Zealand an informed and engaged public is in line with goals of local, regional and national government to increase public involvement in freshwater through participatory decision-making.No Full Tex