These mark the first steps in a citizen science initiative aimed at gaining a better understanding of water quality and the presence of nitrates in rural areas.

The sampling, carried out thanks to public participation in the Santibáñez and Valdehumada valleys, enabled a total of 31 water samples to be collected, mostly from private wells, but also from fountains, water troughs, springs and other supply points, providing valuable information on water resources used in daily life.

Although the activity was initially aimed at people who had previously registered via the project’s website, community involvement has been one of the defining features of these early campaigns, and the response from local residents exceeded the organisers’ expectations. Several people spontaneously joined those already registered in the various localities, demonstrating the existing interest in understanding the quality of the local water they use regularly and in contributing to the generation of environmental knowledge useful for the region.

As well as helping with the collection, participants shared information on the history and traditional use of numerous water sources in the region, providing valuable local context to the data collected.

The samples have been preserved in accordance with the protocols established by the project and transferred to the University of Burgos, where the relevant laboratory analyses are currently being carried out.

Thanks to this network of participants, ambassadors and collection points, the project is beginning to build a detailed map of water quality in the study areas.

The sample collection campaigns will continue until next August in various areas of Castile and León, Aragon and Portugal.

The University of Burgos encourages local residents, associations, local councils, irrigation communities and anyone else interested to join this citizen science initiative. The more samples collected, the more comprehensive and representative the map will be, enabling us to determine the presence of nitrates and the state of water resources in the region.

Those interested can view the study areas and participation options, and register via the sampling campaign page on the website.

La entrada Life-Nitrazens’ first community campaign in Odra-Pisuerga measures nitrate levels in the water se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

Through the use of specific scientific kits and citizen science methodologies in which Ibercivis participates, volunteers from the Ebro and Duero river basins will collect rigorous data that will foster evidence-based water governance.

The excessive presence of nitrates in surface and groundwater constitutes one of the most complex ecological and health challenges in rural and agricultural environments. With the intention of comprehensively addressing this issue, 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 upon volunteer citizens to carry out water sampling, ambassadors to dynamicize and guide those who participate, and node leaders so that their entity, association, or city council can be a physical meeting point where volunteers collect their material and deliver 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 its participants three ways to get involved:

• Ambassador: Ambassadors are the eyes and hands of the project on the ground, highly involved individuals or initiatives in charge of managing campaigns and participants in their area. Life-Nitrazens will provide them with everything necessary for this task—informative material, sample kits, support sessions, talks in the area about the project…—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 respecting the cold chain, and a person responsible for sending them to the respective analysis laboratories in Zaragoza and Burgos. The person in charge of the node may or may not be an ambassador, or can coordinate with ambassadors and participants in the area to collect the samples and transfer them to the laboratory.
• Participant: Any person or entity involved with their territory who wants to know the health of their water and participate in a European project like Life-Nitrazens. In coordination with their ambassadors, participants will sample the water in their environment, either individually or in the collaborative campaigns that each ambassador organizes. Each participant will be responsible for taking their sample to their node and will receive constant information, advice, and the analysis results of their sample, as well as recognition from the project for their work.

Once the participation role in these campaigns has been decided, the sample collection protocol is as follows:

1. Registration: Complete one of the registration forms according to your role (as ambassador/node or as participant) and join the WhatsApp Community of the corresponding area.
2. Collection of the Measurement Kit: Go to the assigned reference node on the agreed day to collect a measurement kit that allows a first monitoring directly in the natural or consumption environment.
3. Sampling: Visit the study areas to take water samples following the instructions in the guides provided by the project. The extraction points can be springs, wells, streams, or supply networks.
4. Geolocation: Register the sample data on the Geonity citizen science platform to validate the exact geolocation in situ.
5. Delivery to the node: Bring the sample to the node in less than 3 hours to avoid the degradation of the components and ensure the reliability of the nitrate data.
6. Validation and Scientific Analysis: Check the results of the measurements on the project’s digital platform after the final laboratory analysis.

Thanks to citizen science, measurement campaigns not only multiply the volume of available data on a spatial scale that traditional science could hardly cover autonomously, but also boost environmental awareness among the population.

The Life-Nitrazens project

The objective of Life-Nitrazens is the creation of a centralized data repository and the development of Best Management Practices (BMPs) guides to optimize the use of fertilizers in the agrifood fabric. To achieve this, the initiative has a multidisciplinary consortium of entities: the scientific leadership and monitoring of the pilot areas fall upon leading academic and research institutions, such as the University of Burgos (project coordinator), the Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón (CITA), and the Universidade de Coimbra. Likewise, the project has the key support of public administrations and territorial entities such as the Junta de Castilla y León and the Município de Soure, along with agents from the water, technological, and agricultural sectors in charge of channeling training, water management, and digital solutions on farms, such as Águas do Centro Litoral, the Associação de Beneficiários do Baixo Mondego, the Comunidad General de Riegos del Alto Aragón, Osoigo, and Innovalia Association.

In this consortium, the Ibercivis Foundation assumes the responsibility of leading the communication and dissemination work package and coordinating citizen science methodologies together with the University of Burgos. Ibercivis provides its participatory infrastructure and its experience in environmental protection projects to ensure that the sample collection process by the non-specialized public meets the standards of rigor and scientific validation that public administrations and Hydrographic Confederations require for subsequent political decision-making.

Life-Nitrazens is funded by the LIFE program of the European Union under project ID 101215633.

La entrada Participate in the Life-Nitrazens measurement campaigns: citizens monitor the health of our waters against nitrate pollution se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

A healthy soil is a natural, non-renewable, highly dynamic, and complex resource. Although soil degradation is a natural process, anthropogenic pressure associated with intensive agricultural production, urban developments, and climate change has accelerated and intensified it. Minimizing or reversing this trend requires transformative changes, mainly related to land use and management, which can be driven by all sectors of society.

One of the greatest existing limitations when addressing soil degradation is the limited information and public awareness about it and its social importance. This is why citizen science initiatives offer a dual response to this challenge. On one hand, they contribute to soil science because they allow the monitoring of its health, and on the other hand, these participatory practices allow for knowledge transfer, literacy, and the development of the participants’ skills. Furthermore, the generated data returns to these communities in the form of open science, so it benefits not only the scientific communities.

ECHO is a citizen science project focused on the health of European soils that offers this participatory approach for its research. It belongs to one of the 5 Horizon Europe Missions for the year 2030: the Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” (also called Soil Mission), whose objective is to “provide concrete solutions to the challenges posed by soil degradation and achieve healthy soils across Europe by 2030 through launching, demonstrating, and accelerating the transition towards sustainable soil management practices.” ECHO contributes to this, having its own goal of analyzing, developing, and validating participatory approaches for citizen involvement in soil science. It also aims to demonstrate the integration of citizen science data into existing platforms, such as the European Soil Data Centre, which increases its utility.

Since the beginning of the project in June 2023, its material and citizen science activities were co-designed with the first participants in the role of Ambassadors, and have been put into practice in the first nine national initiatives of ECHO (in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Germany, Poland, Romania, Scotland, and Finland), which have lasted from May 2025 until now. The strategies followed in these first countries are being reproduced in the twenty remaining European countries, where citizen science initiatives are active from February to November 2026.

In all ECHO initiatives, an extensive network of Ambassadors has been created to act as local facilitators of citizen participation, together with the coordinating entities of each national initiative. They have been in charge of recruiting citizen scientists, have organized group soil sampling days, and have facilitated local project activities. They thus extend the reach of each initiative to a wider audience and have brought great value to the project. The citizen scientists, in turn, actively contribute to data collection and soil analysis, participating in local field activities and conducting soil sampling, in-situ measurements, and taking samples for subsequent laboratory analysis.

The Ibercivis Foundation has been the coordinating entity of the ECHO national initiative in Spain, where we have created a solid group of approximately 40 Ambassadors, out of the more than 420 across the nine countries. These people have regularly participated in Ibercivis meetings and activities to manage local initiatives and, for their part, have organized and coordinated up to 35 activities. These activities, mostly focused on raising public awareness of the project to motivate their involvement, have ranged from oral presentations at conferences to workshops and group sampling days that, above all, allowed for a better understanding of the ECHO sampling protocol. All this has resulted in more than 650 samples being taken in Spain, in different biogeographical points of the region where diverse uses and types of soil exist: from agricultural, forestry, industrial, or urban soils. These samples have been taken by, at least, the same number of citizen scientists, since many of them have been taken in larger groups.

To date, more than 6,000 soil samples have been taken across Europe within the framework of the ECHO project. Each sample covers the eight soil health indicators established by the Soil Mission: plant cover, forest cover and landscape heterogeneity, biodiversity in terms of earthworms and microbial diversity, presence of contaminants, heavy metals and nutrients, soil structure and texture, organic matter content, and pH. The use of these standardized indicators, which have been widely tested and are extensively used worldwide, contributes to the homogenization of soil monitoring in Europe and ensures its correct integration into other monitoring programs such as LUCAS. The results of each ECHO soil sample are accessible to the general public from the ECHOREPO platform, which allows downloading for those individuals who have participated in the sampling and allows all interested citizens to be informed. Furthermore, this repository contributes to the scientific use of its data by university students, specialized non-profit groups, or soil science research groups for a deeper analysis of general soil health in Europe.

ECHO continues to seek citizen participation and incorporate new soil samples in twenty European countries (France, Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Czechia, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Ireland, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). In this way, the project aims to improve soil literacy, facilitate the co-production of knowledge between citizens and the scientific community, and foster more environmentally friendly soil management, offering a replicable approach across Europe.

The project ECHO – Engaging citizens in soil science: the road to healthier soils is funded by the European Union (GA No 101112869) and co-funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) (GA No 10068004).

La entrada Towards healthier soils: ECHO initiatives come to an end in Spain, but continue in much of Europe se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

On June 17th, the online event “No project is an island” will take place—a meeting designed to reflect on the impacts achieved, debate the integration of citizen science into research, and define the next steps.

The event, titled “No project is an island – Bridges towards a joint legacy for the future of CS in Europe”, will take place on June 17th, from 09:30 to 15:00 CEST, marking the closure of the European projects European Citizen Science (ECS) and IMPETUS. With the aim of celebrating their achievements and promoting citizen science practices, we invite researchers, social actors, and interested citizens to participate in this conference.

The programme will feature representatives from active European projects such as Reinforcing, COALESCE, and Science Comes to Town. This panel will discuss the necessary strategies to ensure that open and participatory research continues to expand.

Additionally, the event will include a session led by Vanessa Mignan, an expert in inclusion and public engagement. Mignan will guide the debate “The Citizen Science Anti-Manifesto”, a collective exercise designed to identify the biases of the scientific community in its relationship with groups traditionally excluded from research spaces.

To conclude, the third IMPETUS Demo Day will be held, featuring a dynamic format of short presentations where the projects integrated into the IMPETUS accelerator will pitch their proposals. Attendees will take on the role of key stakeholders, evaluating the feasibility and impact of these initiatives for the next generation of citizen science projects.

Date: June 17th, 2026

Time: 09:30 – 15:00 CEST

Format: Online

Registration: You can now secure your place through the Zoom registration link.

La entrada No Project Is an Island: ECS & IMPETUS Come Together for One Final Event se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

Ibercivis and CIEMAT coordinate EOSC-CSN, which will establish the governance framework and technical architecture for integrating citizen science communities into the European Open Science Cloud. Funded by Horizon Europe, the project launches an open call for expressions of interest from European experts.

Fundación Ibercivis and the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT) today launch EOSC-CSN (EOSC Citizen Science Node), a Horizon Europe initiative that will design the first thematic citizen science node within the EOSC Federation — the digital research infrastructure connecting scientific institutions across more than 40 European countries.

The project, funded with €50,000 over six months under the EOSC Gravity Preparatory Grants scheme, is completed by Citizen Science Italia and the University of Leiden (representing Citizen Science Nederland).

A strategic pathway for the European citizen science community

The EOSC Federation currently depends on academic credentials (EduGAIN) for resource access, inadvertently excluding thousands of citizen researchers, NGOs, and participatory science communities that generate high-value scientific data across Europe. EOSC-CSN addresses this structural barrier by designing a multi-level governance model, AARC-compliant identity proxies, and FAIR validation tooling specifically adapted to community-led research.

The project’s primary deliverable is the Node’s Project Charter — the foundational document establishing the technical and operational architecture for integrating citizen science into the EOSC Federation. This charter will serve as the roadmap toward a permanent European Research Infrastructure (ESFRI/ERIC), backed by letters of intent from the science ministries of Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.

The project follows a ‘Design-by-Validation’ approach: a panel of 15 Community Leaders will functionally test the proposed solutions, while an Expert Group of 10–15 specialists will provide rigorous peer review of governance, technical and legal compliance with EOSC standards.

“EOSC-CSN opens a strategic pathway for the European citizen science community. For the first time, the continent’s public research infrastructure is being explicitly designed to include unaffiliated researchers alongside institutional scientists. What we build in these six months will define how citizens participate in European science for the next decade,” said the Ibercivis coordination team.

Open call: 10–15 European experts

In parallel with the launch, the project opens a public call to constitute an Expert Group of 10–15 European specialists who will peer-review and validate the Project Charter. Profiles sought include expertise in citizen science platforms and networks, EOSC and FAIR data management, participatory research, research infrastructure governance, legal and ethical aspects, interoperability and metadata, and sustainability models.

Participation involves 2–3 online meetings of approximately 90 minutes between June and August 2026, plus document review (approximately 1–2 working days). Selected experts will receive a fee of €300 for their contribution. University or institutional affiliation is not required. The call is open until 16 June 2026.

Expressions of interest should be sent to info@ibercivis.es with the subject line ‘EoI: EOSC-CSN Expert Group’, including: name, affiliation and country; half a page on relevant experience; area(s) of contribution; and one concrete idea the EOSC-CSN should address. Full details at eosc.riecs.eu.

About EOSC-CSN

EOSC-CSN (Sub-Grant Agreement EOSCGravity-PREP-2026-027-EOSC-CSN) is funded under EOSC Gravity (GA 101188045) by the European Union, May–November 2026. Views expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the EU or the European Commission. Further information: eosc.riecs.eu — eosc.eu/horizon-europe-projects/eosc-csn

La entrada Launch of the EOSC-CSN project se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

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.

La entrada Participate in the Life-Nitrazens measurement campaigns: citizens monitor the health of our waters against nitrate contamination se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

Website

La entrada EOSC-CSN: Designing the thematic node that integrates citizen science into the EOSC Federation se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

The European project PLAN-B held an online workshop on 21 May dedicated to Lost At Night, the citizen science app that makes it possible to georeference night-time images of Earth captured by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The session, organised online and open to the public, brought together around fifty participants interested in contributing to the study of light pollution from a collaborative perspective.

During the workshop, attendees were able to learn about the scientific value of night-time photographs taken from the ISS and the role played by human input in identifying reference points in the images. The session combined a scientific introduction by Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel with a technical explanation by Francisco Sanz, Director of Ibercivis and developer of the app, on how it works. After the talks, the workshop moved on to the practical part, in which participants worked directly with the tool.

The result was particularly positive: in just one session, participants managed to generate 2,500 georeferenced control points, reaching 80% of the collective target set for the workshop, which had initially been established at 3,000 points. These points are essential for correctly aligning night-time images with geographical coordinates and turning them into useful data for scientific research.

Lost At Night and the scientific value of images taken from the International Space Station

Lost At Night is designed to help create a global map of the Earth’s night-time lights, with the aim of measuring and monitoring light pollution. By linking space images to specific locations, the tool helps generate valuable environmental data to study the impact of artificial light at night on ecosystems, biodiversity and human health.

The initiative is part of the PLAN-B project, funded by the European Union through Horizon Europe, which works to address the impacts of light and noise pollution on terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystem systems. PLAN-B seeks to create new pathways for knowledge, regulation and social participation that help reduce these impacts in Europe.

In addition to strengthening the use of Lost At Night as a citizen science tool, the workshop helped reinforce the participation of scientific, educational and citizen communities in the study of the night from space. PLAN-B will continue to develop new challenges and participatory campaigns within the application, with the aim of expanding the available database and continuing to involve researchers, students, associations, activists and the general public in the fight against light pollution.

With this activity, Lost At Night demonstrates the potential of citizen collaboration to transform space images into useful scientific information. Each georeferenced point contributes to a better understanding of how we illuminate the planet at night and what effects this lighting may have on ecosystems. The workshop therefore marks another step in PLAN-B’s strategy to connect science, technology and social participation in response to one of the least visible, yet increasingly relevant, environmental challenges: light pollution.

Anyone can take part in Lost At Night by georeferencing points, joining the proposed challenges or suggesting new areas to work on. We encourage you to continue collaborating through the app to help achieve the best possible view of Earth’s night sky.

La entrada Lost At Night mobilises around fifty participants in a PLAN-B citizen science workshop se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.

La entrada CitSci Sort: Classify Scientific Publications on Citizen Science se publicó primero en Fundación Ibercivis.