MAPS Lab and ESCOM Featured in Be Giant and the Guysborough-Antigonish Journal

MAPS Lab’s collaboration with the Eastern Shore Citizen Science Coastal Monitoring Network (ESCOM) has been covered twice this month, first in a Be Giant feature on the network’s volunteers, and then in the Guysborough-Antigonish Journal on the August 16 monitoring session at Black Duck Cove.

Be Giant on the Eastern Shore’s grassroots monitoring

MAPS Lab is honoured to be included in Andrew Seale’s Be Giant feature, “Inside Nova Scotia’s grassroots movement to document rising seas and receding beaches” , with photography by Chris Donovan. MAPS Lab appears in the story because Gabriel Spadon took part in the reporting visit and spoke with Seale about the lab’s collaboration with ESCOM.

The feature follows community members at Black Duck Cove as they measure changes in beach slope, vegetation, weather, and marine life with practical, low-cost tools. At the centre of that work are Camilo Botero and Cristina Pereira, whose coastal science and community leadership help turn repeated local observations into a growing environmental record; Colleen Boudreau, who brings deep knowledge of Little Dover and its changing shoreline; and Marian Lucas-Jefferies, whose work with the Diocesan Environment Network helps connect coastal monitoring with communities across the Eastern Shore. The story also records the perspective of Billy and the possibility of involving his grandson, Dakota, showing how citizen science can connect generations as well as data.

MAPS Lab’s role is to help communities make more use of the information they collect. Gabriel Spadon and Oladapo Oyebode are leading participating Dalhousie students and researchers in developing artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools that can organize observations, support questions about changes such as coastal erosion, and make the data easier to explore. The work includes a community-facing chatbot and a gamification engine designed to support sustained participation without losing sight of the people and places behind every measurement.

The Guysborough-Antigonish Journal on the August 16 session

The Guysborough-Antigonish Journal has published Joanne Jordan’s report on ESCOM’s monthly summer monitoring session, “Dalhousie researchers join local citizen scientists for hands-on coastal monitoring” .

On August 16, ESCOM members were joined in the field by three Dalhousie professors, Gabriel Spadon, whose research is in artificial intelligence, Oladapo Oyebode, whose research is in human-computer interaction, and Ronald Pelot of the Department of Industrial Engineering, who specializes in risk management. PhD student Josteve Adekanbi, who works on gamification and serves as ESCOM’s webmaster, also took part, alongside Canso-area citizen scientist Colleen Boudreau.

The session collected data on beach profiles, sediment grain size, coastline change, and coastal vegetation, all of which feed the long-term, community-generated record ESCOM is building for Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore. As the article records, Colleen Boudreau led the beach-profile work and taught the visiting researchers the method, which is the direction of exchange ESCOM is built around. ESCOM coordinator Camilo Botero described it in the piece as “a genuine two-way knowledge exchange,” and noted that seeing the fieldwork firsthand surfaces constraints and opportunities that are not visible from a university office.

Thanks

This collaboration is possible because of ESCOM’s volunteers and the Eastern Shore communities who contribute their time, knowledge, and observations. We gratefully recognize Camilo Botero, Cristina Pereira, Colleen Boudreau, Marian Lucas-Jefferies, Josteve Adekanbi, Billy, Dakota, Oladapo Oyebode, Ronald Pelot, the participating Dalhousie students and researchers, the Diocesan Environment Network, and its Anglican Church partners. We also thank Dalhousie University and the Ocean Frontier Institute for supporting the research collaboration.

Our thanks go to Andrew Seale for bringing these people and their work together in the Be Giant feature, to Chris Donovan for documenting them through photography, and to Joanne Jordan and the Guysborough-Antigonish Journal for their continued attention to the Eastern Shore’s coastal communities. Read the full story at Be Giant .