Julia von Gönner

Development and evaluation of a Citizen Science programme for freshwater monitoring to assess the ecological status and pesticide contamination of streams 

I am interested in biodiversity education and especially in new approaches to improve the science-society-policy interactions in the field of environmental research.

In my PhD thesis, I investigate the potential of Citizen Science for ecological und ecotoxicological freshwater monitoring. I am building up a Citizen Science programme to assess the aquatic insect and invertebrate diversity as indicators for the ecological status and pesticide contamination of streams in the three german federal states Saxony, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt. The citizen scientists will also examine the hydromorphological and structural quality of the streams.

The planned Citizen Science stream monitoring programme will complement the german national stream monitoring programme (“Kleingewässermonitoring”) of the Federal Environmental Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA) and of Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). I work in close cooperation with the ‘environment buses’ (Umweltmobile) of the Saxonian Foundation for Nature und Environment.

My aim is to assess the structure and quality of the obtained ecotoxicological Citizen Science data and identify adequate methods for an integrated evaluation of Citizen Science data and professionally generated data. I will also evaluate the extent and quality of ecological and transformative learning processes of the volunteers set off by the Citizen Science programme.

For more information you can visit my research project site.