"Air pollution would be the second biggest environmental concern of the French after climate change." According to an INSEE study in 2019, air quality is a growing concern for french people, who are questioning the health risks associated with this pollution.

To inform citizens about the quality of the air around them, the Lichens Go program offers monitoring of the lichens growing on trees in order to better know the air pollution of french cities.

Indeed, lichen is a valuable bioindicator (living organism that reacts precisely to a change in the environment) to determine the air pollution of a city. Thanks to this participatory inventory, more and more data about lichens has been obtained. However, although this data has been made available for free use (open-data), they are still little exploited and usable in their raw version.

The idea of this project would be to suggest a methodology to analyse existing data ( In this case it will be existing data on lichens and the air pollution indices they provide). This data analysis will then be used to develop visual representations (infographics or data-visualisations) that can be used as a means of mediation for the public.

If you are interested in making data from the Lichens GO participatory science program meaningful, join us on March 2 at 5pm on https://meet.jit.si/HACK4NATURE for the launch of the challenge!