Analyze air pollution with a mobile application that examines the lichens present in the city and raise awareness among the urban population of the effects that pollution has on our health. These are the objectives of the Liquencity II project that has joined the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Navarra and the Terrabiota association of Pamplona, together with the Universities of Vigo and Oviedo. Liquencity II will be launched during this course with secondary school students, high school and vocational training, who will use a cell phone to analyze lichens and their role as bioindicators of air quality.

This is the second phase of the project coordinated by the Royal Botanical Garden and the Global Biodiversity Information Infrastructure (GBIF Spain), which in its previous edition was carried out in Madrid and Barcelona. The study is also supported by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

Schoolchildren will create maps of lichen diversity and atmospheric pollution. Previously, interested teachers will conduct training sessions and students will learn to identify and quantify lichen species growing on trees.

"Students and teachers will have an application for mobile devices, which we are already working on developing, that will facilitate data collection and will also have specific materials for each city, such as tree and lichen cards and educational units," explained the general coordinator of the project, the CSIC researcher at the Royal Botanical Garden, Sergio Pérez-Ortega.

This mobile application will guide the sampling of lichens living on trees and will have all the information of the project. It will work on the digital platform Natusfera, but the application under development will be customized for this project so that data collection is facilitated and directed by the application and can be easily used by anyone.

All the data validated in this platform by expert lichenologists will become part of the GBIF, so that, in addition to being a project to raise awareness and help municipal management, it will also be a citizen science project at the service of the global scientific community.

"Our experience with Liquencity tells us that, despite the importance of air quality to our health, the perception of the problem is not widespread among the public. Measures taken to mitigate excessive levels of certain pollutants are often not understood. Therefore, projects that encourage the participation of young people, providing knowledge, making decisions and thinking of ways to change our habits, such as this one, are key to making a real transition towards more sustainable and healthy cities", adds the project manager.