Idaho "Citizen Science" Water Monitoring opportunity?

On March 29, 2010 Sara Cohn of The Idaho Conservation League created a Facebook comment and a blog post and on the ICL Community titled "Cutting Water Quality Monitoring is Pound Foolish." The thrust of the post is that the Idaho State Department of Water Quality has announced they are gutting its water quality-monitoring budget at least for the next two years. Sara notes that "Water is the lifeblood of our communities, offering recreation, enjoyment, and sources of drinking water. Without monitoring information about these precious resources, Idahoans will not be able to identify problem streams or sources of pollution."

In response I wrote the following comment on the ICL Facebook and Blog pages.

I would like to suggest that a new era of transformational Internet networking tools are becoming available to enable"Citizen Science" projects to monitor sensitive water resources and other environmental topics that affect the quality of life in our living

communities. At least in the interim period, until the State budget improves (and DEQ agency priority changes), I believe it is possible students and teachers, concerned citizens, scientists, retired people and others may be interested, and even excited, to have the opportunity to contribute to important water quality knowledge, especially as it relates to the specific geographical locations and time frames where they live, and recreate.

In Idaho and other states over several years I have been in the presence, and have videotaped high school science classes and other volunteer groups learning how to gather basic water quality monitoring data and create geo referenced and time dated reports for their communities. And I have also been actively involved with many others in learning how to initiate networking opportunities for environmental interest projects including the use of internet tools and initiatives including the GeoWeb, ImageWeb, MobileWeb, Interest/SocialWeb, OpenSourceWeb and Semantic/Linked Data Web.

If readers of this comment are interested in starting a discussion project or group about the Idaho citizen science water quality monitoring issue please leave another comment here or contact me through my profile or this blog site.

Idaho Environmental Summit - 2007

In 2006, on November 29, and December 12, I posted information about the first annual Idaho Environmental Summit, including information about our (Mountain Visions) participation and suggestions for future networking. We are involved in the Summit again this year and will continue to encourage more in depth internetworking on the Idaho topics being discussed. I will write more later about my experiences at the conference this year.

December 11-13, 2007 are the dates for "The second annual Idaho Environmental Summit with more than thirty partner organizations, offers seven keynote events and over 70 breakout sessions featuring sensational nationally recognized speakers." The IES Keynote Speakers web page provides details about these speakers including Richard Louv, Keith Allred, Charles Wilkinson, D.J. Eagle Bear Vanas , Deborah Williams, and Brent Stinnet.

"Breakout sessions will feature over one hundred presenters providing educational and networking opportunities and current research for all the people and organizations of Idaho."

Informative sessions on subject areas include:
Air Quality
Cleanup and Remediation
Climate Change
Collaboration
Energy
Environmental Education
Faith and Environment
Fire and Fire Management
Fish and Wildlife
Land Use
Natural Resource Information
Recreation
Sustainability
Tribal Topics
Water Resources Research

A Network Where No One is in Charge

I intended this post to be related to the previous post "Public vs. Private Benefit." The most glaring example of a "Public Benefit" process in modern times is the tremendous cooperative and sharing attitude of people who developed the modern Internet. This same open source process is growing stronger via social networking tools and provides an obvious and logical alternative to the "Private Benefit" organizations that have controlled the environmental and social justice economies of many cultures worldwide.

Today, John Markoff wrote an interesting article about this topic in the Business Section of the New York Times titled: "The Team That Put the Net in Orbit." He describes the cooperative spirit of the open source software networking movement in the 1980s that lead to the Internet as we know it today.

The article credits Al Gore, then a U.S. Senator, "with introducing legislation in 1988 to finance what he originally called a "national data highway.... Ultimately, in 1991, his bill to create a National Research and Education Network did pass. Funded by the National Science Foundation, it was instrumental in upgrading the speed of the academic and scientific network backbone leading up to the commercialized Internet." Markoff quotes Lawrence H. Landweber, one of the pioneers of "internetworking" who said of Al Gore, "He is a hero in this field."

Markoff notes that "Some 220 of the original Internet pioneers met here at the end of November to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the NSFnet, the scientific data network that was originally constructed to tie together the nation’s five supercomputer centers and that would ultimately explode into today’s Internet. By the time the academic network was shut down in 1996, it connected 6.6 million host computers and extended to 93 countries."

"The story of the network and its impact on the world is a case study in the role of serendipity in technology design and in the power of a deftly managed public-private partnership."

Markoff also states in the article that "According to a wide range of conference participants, NSFnet ultimately succeeded because of both the hacker culture of engineers that built the system and the very nature of the network they were creating; it fostered intellectual collaboration in a way not previously possible.

“The model of a network where no one is in charge is a model that can scale,” said Douglas E. Van Houweling, the chairman of the Merit Network when the NSFnet backbone was constructed."

A Wikipedia page notes that open source software "is often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open-source software is the most prominent example of open source development and often compared to user generated content."

In previous posts here I have tried to connect social networking concepts that promote user generated content with the concept of Common Adventure projects. The open source networking where "no one is in charge" fits well with my experiences and thoughts. The increasing use and value of the Geo Web and the Semantic Web also fit into what I see in the future. I will continue to try to clarify these ideas in future posts.

Barry Lopez Encourages Conversations

Tonight, in Boise, Barry Lopez told us about storytelling and how the words and ideas of a storyteller can, and should, have the outcome of encouraging new conversations and ideas in a community.

This Blog post gives me the opportunity to add my own comments to the story I heard Barry Lopez tell. I should note that an audience member asked Barry if the story he told tonight was written down anywhere for others to read? My interpretation of his response was that it was not written down anywhere except in the notes he held in his hand, and that we in the audience should go out and tell our own stories about what we think is important. He also said that if his talk stimulated this further conversation he had done his job. Here, tonight, I will add a few of my own initial comments to start doing my share.

Barry talked about the growing interest by individuals to participate in their communities and to take on the role of helping to solve problems and providing future opportunities that current Federal, State and local governments are not. He believes young people are especially motivated in this direction, but all of us, even older generations, can and should be integrally involved as well.

I met Barry a few times in the late 1960's when we both lived on the McKenzie River near Eugene, Oregon. He was a young writer, gaining a reputation and I was involved at the University of Oregon in a community outdoor recreation and environmental networking project that had connections in many colleges and communities in North America. For more than a decade from the early 60's until the late 70's much has been written about the tremendous citizen collaboration and community participation in environmental issues with people of all ages that helped create a positive environmental perspective on the future in America and around the world. Many people in the Boise audience tonight may have also been involved in this exhilarating and exciting process.

Somehow, this "flash" of energetic citizen involvement seems to have been diminished over the last 25 + years. I believe Barry Lopez told a story tonight about how these conversations and community involvement can be revived and that we should expect current and future generations to again imagine and shape the future in positive ways.

Barry Lopez left us tonight with a very positive message and "Hope" for the future.

There were many other parts to the story that Barry told tonight about polar bears, climate issues, and people he has met in other countries. As he writes and tells these stories I know people are encouraged to start good conversations with friends and neighbors in their own communities. And, as Barry also noted that the good storyteller fades into the background as this happens.

Thank you, Barry Lopez.

His talk and story in Boise was provided by "The Cabin Literary Center."