A badge showing a graphical representation of mosquito habitats on a landscape with the words Mosquito Habitat Photo Challenge 2021
Between July 25 and August 25, the NESEC-led GLOBE Observer team held the Mosquito Habitat Photo Challenge, which asked volunteers to collect concurrent observations of mosquito habitats and land cover. Given the complexity of the data collection request, we created seven new support products and a new email initiative. New products included an activity tracker (in English, Spanish, and Chinese) with activities that encourage learning about the science or skills required for data collection (575 downloads), a handout showing how to photograph mosquito larvae (495 downloads), a data dashboard dynamically showing data submitted during the challenge (12,541 views), a guide showing how to take concurrent land cover and mosquito habitat observations (120 downloads), a badge (42 downloads), a participation certificate (110 downloads), and a certificate for those who submitted data (66 downloads). All products were hosted on the Mosquito Habitat Photo Challenge page on the GLOBE Observer website. As part of the new email initiative with the goal of supporting users, we sent weekly email updates to participants in the GLOBE Mission Mosquito campaign, the GLOBE U.S. Partners Forum, Trees Around the GLOBE campaign, and posted on GLOBE social media, GLOBE Observer news, and to users who opted in to receive communication from us. Those who opted in to receive communication and submitted data (49 people) also received a special certificate at the conclusion of the challenge. Web statistics indicate that most people who received the special certificate (hosted on a hidden URL) downloaded it, while the general participation certificate was only downloaded by 110 users, indicating that email communication is highly effective even though the reach for this challenge was small.