At the end of August, Research and Innovation Fellows and Associates from the E3 Sharing Space for Nature team met with Professor Mark Mulligan, from Kings College London, to build FreeStations. These FreeStations are open source environmental data loggers, which will monitor noise, air, light and pollution. They are customisable, low-cost and easy to build, “designed to make reliable, detailed local environmental data more accessible in areas that may have little local financial and technical capacity for the collection of such data” (FreeStation).
Work in progress!
These will be tested on the University of Kent Campus, before being rolled out across East Kent on other planned projects, to investigate associations between nature restoration and these different forms of environmental pollution, as listed above. The University of Kent Canterbury campus is rich in biodiversity, hosting over 1000 different species and important habitats, such as ancient woodlands, providing a great testing ground for this project.
Take a look at pictures of the build day below, and find out more about the work of the E3 Sharing Space for Nature project on the project website.
Research Fellow, Natalia Zielonka, building a FreeStationInnovation Fellow, Laura Kor, building a FreeStationThe completed FreeStations
