Scientists are looking for citizen involvement in a research project they will undertake on Earth Day on April 22. India Biodiversity Portal will launch a nationwide ‘Neighbourhood Trees Campaign’ to record the tree species across the country.
All you need to do is “Grab a camera, photograph and document trees in your garden, road, neighbourhood park, farms, forests, lake shores or river banks, and sign up at treesindia.in and upload your observations,” according to founders of the campaign.
The ‘Neighbourhood Trees Campaign’ is part of the TreesIndia group activity (http://treesindia.in) on the India Biodiversity Portal in association with ATREE, SeasonWatch, Nizhal (Chennai), Keystone Foundation (Kotagiri), Strand Life Sciences and Azim Premji University.
Once the observations about trees in the neighbourhood are uploaded on http://treeindia.in where experts will help you identify unidentified species and confirm identified ones.
The aim of the campaign, according to the organisers, is to create awareness about the importance of trees in neighbourhoods and to aggregate information on tree diversity in India. The neighbourhood trees campaign hopes to create a page for every one of the around 7,500 tree species across India. All data gathered will be openly accessible and in the public domain.
The campaign will go on until April 27.
