Category Archives: post

photo: private

We are very happy to welcome the new PostDoc Costijn Zwart to the ISOSCAN project. With an interest in meteorology, snow science, water isotopes, and fieldwork experience, and a highly relevant set of scientific publications, Costijn brings along a perfect mix of expertise for ISOSCAN. We’re looking very much forward to having Costijn with us in the project after the summer at the Geophysical Institute at University of Bergen.  

Costijn himself says: “First of all I am excited to become part of the team and look forward to meeting all the participants! My background is in operational meteorology and snow science. For the past 10+ years, I have worked in the geochemistry lab at James Cook University and in remote north Australia. In my PhD research I used stable isotopes to reconstruct and interpret environmental change and worked on stable isotopic signatures of extreme weather events such as Tropical Cyclones.” 

What is Water4All actually about? What other research is going on in the framework of this call and the entire funding scheme? To answer these questions, the Water4All secretariat organised a 2-day kickoff meeting at the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation in Madrid, where our project had to be represented. Principal investigator Harald Sodemann was at this meeting for ISOSCAN. In addition to presentations of each individual of the 27 projects funded within this Water4All call, the European Commission was represented by two speakers that explained the framework for how the EU plans to adapt to a changing water cycle with climate change. The ISOSCAN presentation stimulated a quite lively discussion, including many questions about the citizen science approach. In addition to all other project representatives, several funding agencies were represented as well, and it was indeed useful to participate in this networking event, for example to connect with the Norwegian and Swedish-led projects ECCO and MEWS. The mid-term event may be organised in a hybrid format such that we could reduce our travel activity.

An important part of the ISOSCAN project is collaboratively designing a citizen science framework in northern Scandinavia to collect high-resolution stable water isotope data to improve hydrological forecasting. It may seem easy to involve hikers by simply distributing sampling kits and instructions. But in order to become a well-functioning and lasting citizen science arrangement, it needs to bring value to scientists, citizens and all other stakeholders involved. For this purpose, Janne Liburd and Kristof Tomej from the University of Southern Denmark use tourism co-design. Tourism co-design is a creative approach that seeks to use productively the complexities that arise when people from different backgrounds meet and interact.

As a first step, Janne and Kristof facilitated a co-design workshop with the core ISOSCAN team in Bergen to identify relations between the work packages, critical moments, and possible scenarios. The scientists were challenged to create the journey of a stable water isotope from the ocean to the snowpack to a collected sample to the university lab and beyond. The joint visualization of the isotope journey emerged in a colourful map, which uncovered many possible journeys. It also demonstrated how each of the team members, and other stakeholders, relate differently to a snow or water sample. It also revealed how value creation happens at many different levels e.g. school classes, local residents, cruise tourists, sail & ski tourists, which should be appreciated and communicated accordingly. Next, we will co-design with local nature and outdoor organisations, tourism businesses and potential citizen scientists in Norway and Sweden, to expand our shared understanding and move closer to a testable citizen science model.