Hyd students to record effect of climate change

Using mobile app

Hyderabad: Hundreds of students from the four cities of Hyderabad, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai are coming together to document how climate change is impacting trees, birds and butterflies around them in urban areas. Using mobile applications as part of a citizen science project by Mumbai-based social enterprise Ladybird Environmental Consulting, they are trying to engage around 3,000 students across 40 schools in the cities.

With the help of WWF, they have tied up with ten schools in Kolkata whose students will click photographs and take notes on the changes they see in the urban bio-diversity landscape. For trees they would collect data on the pattern of the fall of their leaves, fruiting and flowering seasons - all indicators of the impact of climate change.

"All this information will be collated for a period of five years during which we will have substantial data to understand the impact of climate change in the four cities," Dr V Shubhalaxmi, who has conceptualised the project, said. All the data and images collected would be uploaded by the students on the three apps - iBirds, iButterflies and iTrees - which would go live on Android devices from Friday.

Easy to find in cities, birds, butterflies and trees are known as indicators of climate change as they are among the most affected by any changes in the climate.