The functionality available on modern 'smartphone' mobile devices, along with mobile application software and access to the mobile web, have opened up a wide range of ways for volunteers to participate in environmental and biodiversity research by contributing wildlife and environmental observations, geospatial information, and other context-specific and time-bound data. This has brought about an increasing number of mobile phone based citizen science projects that are designed to access these device features (such as the camera, the microphone, and GPS location data), as well as to reach different user groups, over different project durations, and with different aims and goals. In this chapter we outline a number of key considerations when designing and developing mobile applications for citizen science, with regard to (1) interoperability and data standards, (2) participant centred design and agile development, (3) user interface & user experience design, and (4) motivational factors for participation.
A hydrothermal plume with vertical and horizontal length scales of ~18 and ~300 m, respectively, develops in a karstic lake. The plume is generated at the bottom of a basin that contains sediment in suspension, which is at a higher temperature than the water immediately above (the hypolimnion of the lake). The rising convective plume entrains colder hypolimnetic water and develops upward, until it reaches the base of the seasonal thermocline, carrying an important amount of sediment particles from the bottom, which are used as tracers to describe the spatial distribution of the plume. At the level of neutral buoyancy, the plume spreads laterally, as a horizontal baroclinic intrusion.
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