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.

Note :
1. All times are in Indian Standard Time (IST).
2. Abstracts for the Contributed Talks and Posters can be viewed here.
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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 Session

Channel: #posters-session-1

Citizen 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 Session

Channel: #posters-session-2

Citizen 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taukeer Alam