For many people, the endless expanses of the polar regions are faraway places they only know from documentaries. Environmental changes caused by climate change or direct human interventions are now transforming these unique landscapes and their ecosystems.
To assess these changes and demonstrate the vulnerability of the Polar Regions, the EU-funded PolarRES program aims to go beyond the researcher’s view and include citizens’ perspectives in the project.
Journeys to the Arctic or Antarctic can make a lasting impression in various ways. They are chronicles of an irrevocably changing environment. In order to share these insights and help others understand them, the citizen science project “Polar Panorama” will gather, bundle, and distribute them. This way, awareness of the vulnerability of the polar regions can be promoted at the ecological, social, and cultural level, while also highlighting the need to adopt more sustainable, climate-aware lifestyles.
About the project
The project PolarRES, was launched in 2021 and received four years of funding by the EU to investigate interactions in the climate systems of the Arctic and Antarctic. By better understanding these processes and pursuing an innovative storylines-based approach, PolarRES investigates how climate projections for the polar regions can be made more reliable for assessing the social and ecological impacts of climate change. One part of the project – “Polar Panorama” – calls for integrating citizens and their perspectives of the changes at work in the polar regions. The goal of this approach is to include people in the research process, who are not actively involved in the scientific community.
Procedure
To do so, people from various groups who have traveled to or live in the polar regions are invited to share their experiences on the project’s website, so as to convey the vulnerability of the polar regions from their standpoint.
Their personal impressions are gathered, expressing the changes and vulnerability of the polar regions, in:
- written form, e.g. poems, individual quotes from diary entries, or short stories, …
- photographic images and video sequences, …
- audio recordings, e.g. noises, nature sounds, singing, voice messages, …
- artistic renderings, e.g. drawings, comics, …
If you’d like to be part of the EU project and help raise awareness for the need to protect the polar regions, share your experiences with the PolarRES program via this website: PolarRES Polar Panorama – A Citizen Science Project - PolarRES
Source: PolarRES
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