Global Earth Challenge

Be part of a worldwide movement and use Global Earth Challenge to submit or classify photos to help our planet’s environment and human health.

Global Earth Challenge is a citizen science campaign that uses technology like smartphones and machine learning to create a globally accessible tool with which anyone can collect, review and learn about issues such as:

• plastic pollution
• insect populations
• air quality
• food sustainability.

URL: https://globalearthchallenge.earthday.org

Reach: Worldwide

Nature of science focus: Online citizen science (OCS) projects can be used to develop any of the Nature of Science (NoS) substrands. Identify aspects of NoS that your students need to get better at or understand more fully and then frame your unit to be very clear about these things when you do them. For example, this project could provide opportunities to discuss why scientists need help with this work, linking to the NoS Understanding about science.

Science capability focus: Gather and interpret data, Engage with science

Science focus: Environmental science, pollution, plastics, insects, air quality, food, sustainability

Some suggested science concepts:

• Plastic can be grouped into different types based on its properties.
• Plastic pollution has environmental impacts
• Insects are important pollinators and play an essential role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. A decline in population numbers will have an impact on ecosystems.
• Changes in habitat can affect the survival of living organisms in an area and the relationships between them.
• The increase in polluting air particulates has impacts on both the health of humans and our planet.
• A stable and sustainable global food supply is dependent on a healthy environment.

Many concepts could be learned – focusing on a few can often be more powerful. Develop your learning outcomes and success criteria from these concepts as well as the Nature of Science strand and the science capabilities.

Some examples of learning outcomes:

Students can:

• describe actions that they could take to help lessen plastic pollution and help protect insects
• explain the importance of pollinators within ecosystems
• discuss the interconnectedness of pollinators and food supply
• explain why science requires detailed observation
• discuss the need for a stable and sustainable global food supply to feed the world’s growing population
• discuss how the logged information could be used by scientists and policy makers
• reflect on their personal awareness of issues around air quality and food supply – have they changed over time?

About the Global Earth Challenge project

22 April 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. To continue building on one of the world’s largest environmental movements, Earth Day partnered with the Wilson Center and the US Department of State to launch the world’s largest coordinated citizen science campaign, Earth Challenge 2020 – now known as the Global Earth Challenge.

This initiative challenges millions of people from around the world to collect more than a billion datapoints in the areas of air quality, insect population, food sustainability and plastic pollution.

Download the Global Earth Challenge app from Google Play or the Apple App Store (currently not available).

Research topics

In 2016, Global Earth Challenge launched a crowdsourcing call for people around the world to tell them “the most important questions in human and environmental health”. After analysing responses, the team selected six main research areas. For each area, voluntary advisory boards – research teams – advise on specific protocols for data collection and sharing. Each research area is also evaluated for alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Currently, there are four topics that are part of this citizen science app.

What is the extent of plastic pollution?

Students take photos of plastic pollution anywhere they see it and then upload them to the app. This informs scientists of the areas with the most pollution and the most common plastic types in an area. Classifying photos of the plastic pollution helps train the artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise the various types of plastic pollution.

Help track air quality

Take photos of the horizon in your area. Using these photos, scientists are able to identify levels of fine airborne particulate matter across the horizon. Whilst these particulates are too small to be identified with the human eye, algorithms help scientists make identifications.

Insect population changes

The global decline in insect populations could have significant impacts on our planet’s biodiversity and ecosystem as many insects are important pollinators. Help sort insect species by collecting data for studies focusing on particular at-risk species such as bees and butterflies.

Food sustainability

Sustainable food production is important for both human consumption and our environment. Classifying photos of crops will enable scientists to understand what – and where – crops are being grown with the goal of improving sustainable farming practices.

Using the app

Under Learn, there is information about the topic and links to various resources such as quizzes, educational activities and more, depending on the topic selected.

Capture is a ready-to-go feature utilising your device’s camera.

In Classify, you choose to receive images based on the research topic you select. By using a range of classification methods, you decide which category the image belongs to. This helps researchers to improve the artificial intelligence machine-learning algorithms.

There are plans to add two more topics in the future: What is in my drinking water? and What are the local impacts of climate change?