Programme
Schedule
26 November 2022
Time: 9.50 am – 4.15 pm
The conference will be a 1-day virtual meeting where participants will interact over a Discord workspace, the link to which will be sent to registered participants closer to the conference dates.
1. All times are in Indian Standard Time (IST).
2. Abstracts for the Contributed Talks and Posters can be viewed here.

Day 0: Fri, 25 Nov 2022 | |
Time | Event |
16:00- 17:00 | Meet & greet + Acclimatizing to Discord by Organising Committee Channel: #lounge |
Day 1: Sat, 26 Nov 2022 | |
Time | Event |
9:50- 10:00 | Introduction to the Conference + Discord server by Organising Committee Channel: #keynote-yuvan-aves |
10:00- 10:50 | Citizen science for education and advocacy by Yuvan Aves Channel: #keynote-yuvan-aves |
11:00- 11:10 | Hashtag Science: Citizen scientists and social media enable conservation monitoring of carnivores across India by Sabiya Sheikh Channel: #short-talks |
11:10- 11:20 | Marine Life of Mumbai – Five years and five hundred species later by Shaunak Modi Channel: #short-talks |
11:20- 11:30 | Mobile application aiding in tracking the Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises of India by Sreeparna Dutta Channel: #short-talks |
11:30- 11:40 | Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises of India: A walk down the memory lane by Sneha Dharwadkar Channel: #short-talks |
11:40- 11:50 | Divers for Diversity : marine citizen science in India by Rhea George Channel: #short-talks |
11:50- 12:00 | Data and Citizen Science in India: A practioner’s toolkit
Channel: #short-talks |
12:00- 12:45 |
Poster SessionChannel: #posters-session-1Citizen science and nature conservation – Bees and butterflies – Indhu Ayyannar Celebrating the seasons with trees – Learnings from SeasonWatch tree festival – Sayee Gidhari Hornbill Watch: A citizen science initiative to conserve hornbills in India – Maitreyi Hegde Snakes in the city: a Spatial and temporal assessment of snakes encounters using citizen science – Gaurav Barhadiya Public attitude on human-wildlife interactions and conservation in Peechi Vazhani WLS of W.Ghats – Nikhil P V Dugong Monitoring Program: Citizen Science in dugong research from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands – Swapnali Gole MIAP – A pilot citizen science atlas of invasive plants – Reshnu Raj R S Determining the pattern of migration of Danainae butterflies in India using citizen science – Naveen Prasad Alex Impacts of a COVID-19 Lockdown on Citizen Science – A Case Study in Karnataka, India – Adithi S Rao |
12:45- 14:15 | Break |
14:15- 15:00 |
Poster SessionChannel: #posters-session-2Citizen science for firefly conservation – Shri Ranjni T. S. Connecting Words and Well-being with Citizen Science – Nishand Venugopal Detecting anomalous checklists using machine learning – Madhura Prasanna Climate change education through Citizen Science – a survey – Suhirtha Muhil Maheswaran Impact of the citizen science course of Nalanda University on mapping the Biodiversity of Nalanda – Shyam Phartyal A scoping review of the current scenario of ecological and environmental citizen science in India – Sagarmoy Phukan Citizen Science through Fungi – Shrey Gupta Citizen Science – A Source to Develop State Level Action Plan for Bird Conservation in Telangana – Sreeja Rachaveelpula A community web of Varun Mitra practicing citizen science through rain gauging – Divyanshu Pawar A study to identify conservation areas for the terrestrial birds of the Central Indian Landscape – Niharika M Building a Database using Unconventional Sources: Squirrels of India – Swati Udayraj “Citizen science”, manual surveys or automated data collection – which is better for ecology? – Paul Pop |
15:00- 16:00 | Conversations on the language of citizen science – Anita Varghese, Ramnarayan K., Taukeer Alam
Channel: #panel-session |
16:00- 16:15 | Vote of thanks by Organising Committee
Channel: #panel-session |
Confirmed Keynote Speaker

Yuvan Aves
Nature-educator, Writer, Environmental defender
Yuvan is a nature-educator, writer, environmental defender and founder of Palluyir Trust for Nature Education and Research. He is the author of 3 books and is writing one on coasts, biodiversity and climate change (Bloomsbury, 2023). He is the recipient of the M.Krishnan Nature Writing Award 2017, the Green Teacher Award 2021, Emerging Leader in Environmental Justice Award 2021, among others. He also co-ordinates the ‘Farm, Environment and Society’ Program at Abacus Montessori School. His expertise in creating Earth-centric and Child-centric curricula is sought after by educational institutions across India. He is currently thinking about and making a curriculum for Climate-education in Chennai/Tamil Nadu.
Abstract
Citizen science for education and advocacy
Citizen science is growing in its impact on school/college education, public literacy and participation. It facilitates the three things most important for meaningful learning – direct participation/experience, relevance and interconnectedness (I’ll be giving examples of these from my own practice as well as others). It is reimagining/democratizing the processes of knowledge-making and sharing. It is also becoming a powerful tool for advocacy and conservation of wild spaces and species, in a bottom-up framework.
Presenters – A trip back in time

Sabiya Sheikh
Hashtag Science: Citizen scientists and social media enable conservation monitoring of carnivores across India
The Wild Canids–India Project (WCIP) endeavours to map, track, and monitor wild canids and striped hyenas of India. When the project was launched in 2018, over 2500 sighting records were received directly from citizens and ~2500 more records collated from social media posts, web- portals and online blogs– also sourced through citizens. This information was used to generate the most updated and reliable distribution maps for dholes, jackals, wolves, foxes and hyenas in the country. This talk will explore how the project continues to directly engage with the contributors and support network with project outputs and updates.

Shaunak Modi
Marine Life of Mumbai – Five years and five hundred species later
Marine Life of Mumbai started with a bunch of people turning up on one of Mumbai’s busiest shores to see what they might find there. A few hundred shorewalks later, the known diversity of Mumbai shores has gone up from species found few and far between to over 500. In this talk I discuss the evolution of Marine Life of Mumbai and working in the ever changing coastline of Mumbai.

Sreeparna Dutta
Mobile application aiding in tracking the Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises of India
Tortoises and freshwater turtles (TFT) are highly threatened vertebrates, with 29 species native to India. However, there is a knowledge gap on distribution, population, and threats to TFTs, along with a lack of sensitization on their ecological role. So how can we acquire data on species-wise distribution, threats, and population dynamics of TFTs throughout a huge country like India, along with improving their awareness among the masses? Addressing this, “KURMA Tracking Indian Turtles”, was developed as a mobile application to engage citizens in conservation by identifying, classifying, and reporting their TFT sightings, and consequently creating a national turtle database. This data has yielded useful insights into turtle distribution, critical turtle habitats, and threats. The talk explores how this initiative has evolved and how it continues to grow by directly engaging with citizens, researchers, and enforcement agencies.

Sneha Dharwadkar
Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises of India: A walk down the memory lane
Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises of India started as an initiative to document our poorly understood freshwater turtles. We started this citizen science initiative to map the presence of the freshwater turtles and tortoises and understand their distribution. 7 years after its initiation, we take a look at how things have been and what has changed for us and the freshwater turtles and tortoises.

Rhea George
Divers for Diversity : marine citizen science in India
REEFLOG is a citizen science program run by Dakshin Foundation aimed at the SCUBA diving community in India. The goal of REEFLOG is to use citizen science as a tool to increase ocean literacy among the dive community and encourage responsible tourist behaviour. The talk explores how the project engages our target audience in various stages of implementation.
Panelists- Conversations on the language of citizen science

Anita Varghese

Ramnarayan K
