The European project Life-Nitrazens is launching a series of citizen environmental monitoring missions to assess water quality in the Douro, Ebro, and Mondego river basins.
Through the use of specific scientific kits and citizen science methodologies in which Ibercivis participates, participants from the Ebro and Douro river basins will collect rigorous data to support evidence-based water governance.
The excessive presence of nitrates in surface and groundwater is one of the most complex ecological and health challenges facing rural and agricultural areas. With the aim of comprehensively addressing this problem, the European project Life-Nitrazens has launched its measurement campaigns — an initiative that seeks to mitigate water pollution by promoting the sustainability of agricultural systems and the protection of river ecosystems.
The measurement campaigns directly call on volunteer citizens to carry out water sampling, on ambassadors to energise and guide participants, and on node managers so that their entity, association, or local council can serve as a physical meeting point where volunteers collect their materials and drop off samples. Registration to participate in the campaigns is done through a form hosted on the project’s own website.
Different ways to participate according to your level of involvement
The project offers participants three ways to get involved:
- Ambassador: Ambassadors are the eyes and hands of the project on the ground — highly committed individuals or initiatives responsible for managing the campaigns and the participants in their area. Life-Nitrazens will provide everything needed for this task — informational materials, sample kits, support sessions, local talks about the project, etc. — and they will be able to coordinate with participants through a WhatsApp community created for this purpose.
- Node: In each area, the project needs a physical space to store samples while maintaining the cold chain, and a person responsible for sending them to the respective analysis laboratories in Zaragoza and Burgos. The node manager may or may not also be an ambassador, and can coordinate with local ambassadors and participants to collect samples and transport them to the laboratory.
- Participant: Any person or entity engaged with their territory who wants to learn about the health of their water and take part in a European project like Life-Nitrazens. In coordination with their ambassadors, participants will sample the water in their surroundings, either individually or as part of the collaborative campaigns that each ambassador organises. Each participant will be responsible for bringing their sample to their node, and will receive ongoing information, advice, and the results of their sample analysis, as well as recognition from the project for their contribution.
Once the participation role has been decided, the sample collection protocol is as follows:
- Registration: Complete one of the registration forms according to your role (as ambassador/node or as participant) and join the WhatsApp Community for your corresponding area.
- Picking up the Measurement Kit: Go to your assigned reference node on the agreed day to collect a measurement kit that allows you to carry out an initial monitoring directly in the natural or consumption environment.
- Sample collection: Visit the study areas to collect water samples following the instructions in the guides provided by the project. Sampling points may include springs, wells, streams, or supply networks.
- Geolocation: Record the sample data on the citizen science platform Geonity to validate the exact geolocation in situ.
- Delivery to the node: Bring the sample to the node within 3 hours to prevent degradation of components and ensure the reliability of nitrate data.
- Validation and Scientific Analysis: Check the measurement results on the project’s digital platform after the laboratory’s final analysis.
Thanks to citizen science, the measurement campaigns not only multiply the volume of data available at a spatial scale that traditional science could hardly cover autonomously, but also promote environmental awareness among the population.
The Life-Nitrazens Project
The goal of Life-Nitrazens is to create a centralised data repository and develop Best Management Practice (BMP) guides to optimise fertiliser use in the agri-food sector. To achieve this, the initiative brings together a multidisciplinary consortium of entities: scientific leadership and monitoring of the pilot areas falls to leading academic and research institutions, such as the University of Burgos (project coordinator), the Agri-Food Research and Technology Centre of Aragon (CITA), and the University of Coimbra. The project also has the key support of public administrations and territorial bodies such as the Junta de Castilla y León and the Municipality of Soure, alongside actors from the water, technology, and agricultural sectors responsible for channelling training, water management, and digital solutions on farms, including Águas do Centro Litoral, the Associação de Beneficiários do Baixo Mondego, the General Community of Irrigation of Upper Aragon, Osoigo, and Innovalia Association.
Within this consortium, the Ibercivis Foundation takes on the responsibility of leading the communication and dissemination work package, and co-coordinating citizen science methodologies alongside the University of Burgos. Ibercivis contributes its participatory infrastructure and experience in environmental protection projects to ensure that the sample collection process by non-specialist members of the public meets the standards of rigour and scientific validation that public administrations and River Basin Authorities require for subsequent policy decision-making.
Life-Nitrazens is funded by the LIFE programme of the European Union under project ID 101215633.