IGAMon-Dog
Invasive and alien species (IGA) are increasingly spreading, not only threatening other species or their habitats, but also having economic impacts or harming public health.
In the IGAMon-Dog project, the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues (UfU) together with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the Wildlife Detection Dogs (WDD) association will examine to what extent the training of dogs of citizen scientists can improve the monitoring of invasive alien species.
The UfU leads the consortium as coordinator and is responsible for the public monitoring of the research process, the implementation of participatory formats for the involvement of citizen scientists in the project, the implementation of the web platform and environmental education.
The UFZ, as a partner in the network, is primarily responsible for the scientific support of the research project and its monitoring, as well as the standardised logging, mapping, geostatistical analysis and trend calculation of the data collected by the citizen scientists.
The WDD is responsible for the preparation of the training content and coordinates the instruction of the dog owners by experienced dog trainers as well as the organisation and implementation of the dog training courses including an evaluation of the individual human-dog teams.
The project will run from April 2021 to September 2024 and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the Citizen Research funding programme.
Project webside: https://www.korina.info/projekte/igamon-dog/