Earth Challenge 2020

Globe sculpture at El Yunque National Forest’s El Portal Visitor Center.

A new citizen science initiative has just been announced to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Earth Challenge 2020 hopes to engage millions of cats like us from all over this globe we call home to help the earth make it out alive.

The first step in the process is happening now. The organizers are currently asking all of us to submit research questions about environmental and human health. Some sample questions they list on their website are:

How much plastic is in my water?

What is the biodiversity of my region?

How does air quality impact the health of my community?

To submit your questions, you can use the form on their website (link above), or tweet @Earth_Challenge using the hashtag #EC2020. You can submit as many questions as you can think up, but the deadline is November 22, 2018.

Organizers will then distill the questions down into common themes, and their expert panel will announce the final questions in early 2019. Hackathons will be held in spring of 2019 to develop applications and technology solutions to collect and synthesize the information needed to answer the chosen questions. The best solutions will be formally developed during the summer and fall of 2019.

WHACK FACT: Hackathons are huge collaborative events where computer programmers, software designers, graphic designers and others get together to develop applications in a short period of time.

Citizen scientists like me and you will use these apps to collect data in the spring of 2020, with the goal of collecting over one billion data points around the globe by Earth Day 2020 (April 22).

Now go submit your questions!