We need citizen scientists to help us better understand the ecology of the salt 
marsh. We have two web sites where you can help us with our research.
The first web site is the "Image Matching Game" site 
(https://scalingupmarshscience.marsci.uga.edu ). Since 2010, we have taken 
thousands of overlapping photographs of a salt marsh, and we need to align the 
photographs to create detailed maps for each year (each year consists of about 
10,000 photographs). Because the images are taken from close to the marsh 
surface, and lack strong visual features, software programs are unable to align 
them automatically. Humans are better at this task than computers, and can 
identify matching features in pairs of photographs.
The second web site is the "Marsh Explorer" 
(https://marshexplorer.marsci.uga.edu/ ).  This site asks you to identify the 
plant and animal species present in the photographs. This is a harder task, but 
it gets us the detailed information that we need to understand the distribution 
of each species. It is also more educational, because users will learn the 
names of the common marsh species.
Both web sites teach some basic facts about salt marsh ecology. (If you have 
ideas about facts that are missing, please send us suggestions using the 
feedback link).
We'd love your help at both sites, and your feedback! Please pass this on to 
your friends and to educators who might want to use it in their classes.
Steven Pennings, University of Houston, 
spenni...@uh.edu<mailto:spenni...@uh.edu>

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