The COVID-19 pandemic offered an unprecedented opportunity to look at changes in the Earth system in response to reduced human activity. Your challenge is to develop tools to better understand changes in the interconnected Earth system as seen through the EO Dashboard.
As Team Fora, we are concern about the water resources and we would like to raise awareness to keep our waters clean and demonstrate the changes between onset of Covid-19 and the pandemic period. For this reason, we collected the chlorophyll-a concentration data of ESA, NASA and JAXA. The data which we use contain the Italian and Croatian coastal areas. We searched what was happening in Italy and Croatia during Covid-19 pandemic to understand the reasons why Chlorophyll-a concentrations are increasing or decreasing. Then we created some graphics and theories in order to inform people.
In this challenge we wanted to study one of the most important problems of our planet, sea pollution. Our challenge is important, because we analyzed the ESA, NASA and JAXA’s Chlorophyll-a concentration data taken from the North Adriatic region by dividing into two areas as Italian and Croatian coasts. We aimed to see the changes of Chlorophyll-a concentration during the pandemic period in Italian and Croatian coasts according to these different three space agencies. In the research stage, we saw that Chlorophyll-a concentration is decreasing in Italian coasts while it is increasing in Croatian coasts during the lockdown. Then we created graphics to demonstrate the anomaly in time scale. We are aiming to raise people’s awareness with the data that we analyzed.
With the effects of Covid 19, a negative trend in water quality is being observed every day. The growing mucilage threat which is extending from the Marmara Sea to the Mediterranean is one of the most recent examples of this situation. Since we experienced this danger closely as a team, we thought that people should be more conscious about it in order to prevent this danger. After we had some debates on this idea, we decided to create a project on Water Quality challenge.
After dividing the data obtained by ESA, NASA and JAXA from the North Adriatic region in the Dashboard into two regions as the Italian and Croatian coasts, we created date-anomaly line charts by using Visme.co charting website. After preparing the graphics, we analyzed the Chlorophyll-a concentrations of Italian and Croatian coasts during the onset of Corona and the pandemic period by correlating the data we obtained from these 3 agencies. Shortly after analyzes we did, we investigated the reasons for the sharp changes observed at certain times in these two regions. At this stage, we received the opinions of people we think can contribute to us, and we did extensive research on the Google search engine. As a result of these intensive researches, we analyzed which natural and artificial factors affect water quality in what ways. In the end, we have come up with ideas about what methods we should use as government and society against these problems and on which issues we should be careful.
In this section of the challenge, we used one of the sources which were recommended to us: 'Earth Observing Dashboard'. For being suitable to our topic, we chose 'North Adriatic - Chlorophyll-a concentration, Water Quality Regional Maps'. By choosing this, the section gave us ESA, NASA and JAXA's data through the years about chlorophyll-a concentration and we could compare them. To compare them, we took the data from all of the 3 agencies and we prepared gif videos to observe if there is a regularity or irregularity at the changes of chlorophyll-a concentration. After that, we decided to work on ESA's datas in our project.
Also, we used another sources which were unrelated to ESA, NASA or JAXA. These resources were from universities from our country, especially from the region Black Sea. For more information, we analyzed people’s essays who we thought could contribute to us and organized meetings with those who we could contact with.
Our Meeting with Professor Doctor Mehmet Aydın - Ordu University
Our Meeting with Doctoral Lecturer Koray Özhan - ODTÜ University
As part of the challenge we participated in, we examined the chlorophyll-a concentration and the amount of increase or decrease over time in the North Adriatic region. While making this comparison, we used the data taken by NASA, ESA and JAXA satellites by making use of the data provided by the competition. We compared these three satellites images of chlorophyll -a concentration change from January 2020 to today, tried to reach some data, and at the same time, we checked whether this change was regular. And ve tried to generate theories about the increase in the level of chlorophyll concentration in the North Adriatic, Italy and Croatia.
1-)Inspired by www.eodashboard at 25.06.2021 https://eodashboard.org/?indicator=N3a2
2-)Wikipedia contributors. (2021, June 23). COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:01, June 29, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_pandemic_in_Italy&oldid=1029988747
3-)Wikipedia contributors. (2021, June 28). COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:00, June 29, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_pandemic_in_Croatia&oldid=1030921988
4-)Anonim, (2020). Croatia Enjoys a Cleaner Environment Thanks to New Waste-Management System in Zadar and Lika-Senj Counties, June 28, 2021, from https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/projects/Croatia/croatia-enjoys-a-cleaner-environment-thanks-to-new-waste-management-system-in-zadar-and-lika-senj-counties
5-)Ceyhan, Z. / Erdemir, E. (2020). AB Denizcilik Politikalarına Genel Bir Bakış, June 26, 2021, from https://baudegs.com/ab-denizcilik-politikalarina-genel-bir-bakis/
6-)Inspired by www.visme.co at 24.06.2021 https://www.visme.co/make-infographics/
7-)Pujia, E. (2010). La Nuova Politica Marittima Integrata, June 28, 2021, from https://www.mit.gov.it/mit/mop_all.php?p_id=07973
#lookingatthebigpicture #Chlorophyll-aConcentration #WaterQuality
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.
