We need citizen scientists to help us better understand the ecology of coastal salt marshes. We have over 60,000 overlapping photographs of a salt marsh, taken every year from 2010 to 2017, and need to align them to create detailed maps for each year. Because the images are taken from close to the marsh surface, and lack strong visual features, software programs are unable to align them automatically. The "Scaling up marsh science" web site (http://scalingupmarshscience.marsci.uga.edu ) allows citizen scientists like you to help us by identifying matching features in pairs of photographs. This information will then be used to create a photographic map of a large area, and to study how this area changes from year to year. At the same time, you'll learn some basic facts about salt marsh ecology. Please pass this on to your friends and to educators who might want to use it in their classes.
Steven Pennings, University of Houston, [email protected]
