Green Turtles - Space Apps Challenge

Green Turtles| A New Perspective

A New Perspective

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, protected areas and other forms of wilderness areas (e.g., arboretums, beaches, parks, marine monuments) have been closed worldwide. Your challenge is to lead the effort to examine any potential impacts of reduced human traffic in such local protected natural environments.

Case Study: Great Barrier Reef Marine Development After Covid-19

Summary

Most people infected with the COVID-19 virus will experience respiratory illness. That’s why most countries try to decrease human traffic by what is called “Covid-19 Lockdown”. Our project is case study to determine the potential positive and negative impacts on a determined local area which is “Great Barrier Reef Marine Park”. It is a marine protected area located in Queensland waters adjoining the Great Barrier Reef and the world's largest coral reef system.

How We Addressed This Challenge

This challenge is to lead the effort to examine any potential impacts of reduced human traffic in such local protected natural environments. My Project is a case study to approach the positive and negative effects of Covid-19 based on specific chosen area. It would be available online. It uses NASA data, Earth Satellites photos and previous research papers to deduce its information. This case study will provide all the related information to the protected area “Great Barrier Reef Marine Park” where indirectly, it will compare the situation of this park after and before this Coronavirus crisis. It will be very helpful project as according to our research, there is no information about the environment during this era. They are focusing on the things that seem important to them.

Earth has never faced a situation like that where we have great knowledge and technology and knew the impacts, it is the first time we are able to take cautions before things get out of hand as in 1918 flu pandemic. So, after this period (2 years or so), this case will be compared to what actually happened. This will become very useful in detecting what may happens again if Earth faced other situations like that. It will provide great data to see what changed for good or bad on our planet.

Maybe, we will be able to see this usefulness soon and that our case study provides what’s truly needed. These information can be used to detect solutions for the predicted negative impacts for this area as during last 50 years, about 8 million tons of plastic is thrown in the ocean and 11-million-piece plastic is attached to coral reefs which leads to their death because it absorbs the oxygen and prevents the light. All of this leads to spread poisonous materials around them. Identifying the challenge will be the first part in finding the solution, this way we can provide better future for the new generations

How We Developed This Project

Choosing this challenge wasn’t easy as other challenges was very spectacular and eye-catching that would make anyone want to work within. However, what inspired our team was some reasons:

1- The availability to make any type of solution.

2- The way how we can analyze complex data to draw clear and simple conclusions.

3- Choosing this challenge will provide more variety between projects among teams as it wasn’t specific to a specific area.

4- The team members qualifications and skills fitted this challenge

5- Motivation to show visible results.

6- This study will provide enough data for future generation to study these environmental changes during this specific era (Coronavirus Crisis)

Many of these reasons match any other challenge. But, this one had what we need. After that, we started asking and planning till we reach an approach and methodology for the project management. We searched upon former peer review case studies about Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, Covid-19, and Environment. We detected many information related to:

· Animals, birds, the park ecosystem.

· Threats that differed from global warming to human activities to fishing industries and so on.

· Covid-19 impacts on different animals and coral reefs in terms of pros and cons.

· Pollution increase in that area and its aspects.

We begin to relate these pieces of information together using NASA Open Data Earth observatory, Satellites photos that reflect change in temperature among certain areas such as NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite. We also used (Coral Reef Information System) CoRIS, NASA Probes Environment and COVID-19 Data Pathfinder. Of course, other resources were used as ELSEVIER and may other. However, these are the most important and beneficial ones.

Even though, our project is a case study, our software used tools are based on cloud-based web development services. It allows users to create HTML5 websites and mobile sites using online drag and drop tools. Our website will show full information about our project that is written in this application. Our project didn’t require any coding or hardware tools but, if it is required in the future, we are willing to do so.

During all these management process of the project, our team was able to face problems that must be overcome. The first was the difficulties of using NASA data that is because first time dealing with them, the inability to find others to help and we can’t seem to understand how NASA and its partner websites works. We were able to overcome this problem and that is considered an accomplishment by asking ambassadors, finding online tutorials to do so, asking other teams. It took us approximability 2 days to fully understand but it was worth it.

The second problem wasn’t not enough information. No one is willing to write papers about environment in these crisis days. Lack of information may cause some drop in information. Although of that we didn’t stop, we used our skills to make a good research and extract them from google datasets, online websites, NASA Data and …. Etc. To us, using our skills together was a great achievement, each one has lived in a different place with different opinions and ideas. Being able to connect them all to produce such a successful project is an effort that must be considered.

Our team’s motto is to “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action”. We believe that our project will make a difference and provide help for scientists studying the covid-19 effects on that are in the future. Our website will have more critical information that may interest you. Check it out!!