1 of 37

Tracking Mosquito Breeding Grounds from Your Backyard to the World: How Citizen and Satellites Work Together�����Di Yang, Ph.D. Department of Geography, University of Florida ����

07/24/2025

2 of 37

Citizen Science

  • What is citizen science?

​

Scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists

Also known as:

  • crowd science
  • crowd-sourced science
  • civic monitoring
  • volunteer monitoring
  • networked science
  • participatory monitoring/research

3 of 37

The Rise of Citizen Science

  • GBIF – Global Biodiversity Information Facility
    • Citizen scientists have been contributing a large and growing percentage of records to the GBIF network.
    • 50% of occurrence records on GBIF are citizen science observations
      • eBird
      • iNaturalist
      • Swedish Species Observation System

​

​

4 of 37

The Rise of Citizen Science

  • Number of Programs

​

https://www.scseagrant.org/citizen-science-encouraging-public-engagement/

And NASA!

5 of 37

The Value of Citizen Science

  • Significance of citizen science to research greater than perceived

“Quality of data collected by volunteers, on a project-by-project basis, has generally been found as reliable as the data collected by professionals"

​

https://www.vgiscience.org/about.html

6 of 37

How Can we Make Optimal Use of Citizen Science Data?

Increasing Quality

Expert

Crowd

Treated Crowd

Foody, See, Fritz et al., 2013

Foody, G. M., See, L., Fritz, S., Van der Velde, M., Perger, C., Schill, C., & Boyd, D. S. (2013). Assessing the accuracy of volunteered geographic information arising from multiple contributors to an internet based collaborative project. Transactions in GIS, 17(6), 847-860.

7 of 37

NASA GLOBE Observer

8 of 37

GLOBE Observer Products

Land Cover & Mosquito Habitat

  • GLOBE Observer invites citizens to make environmental observations that complement NASA satellite observations to help scientists studying Earth and the global environment. 

​

  • By using the GLOBE Observer app, you are joining the GLOBE community and contributing important scientific data to NASA, GLOBE, your local community, and students and scientists worldwide.  

​

    • Core Protocols - Four Spheres + System
    • Arctic and Earth SIGNs (STEM Integration of GLOBE and NASA) - GLOBE, NASA, Culturally Responsive Curriculum
    • Winter Berries - GLOBE berry monitoring protocols
    • Science Research Project
    • Local Issues
    • Science Symposium

9 of 37

Diseases due to mosquito bite

  • Malaria
  • Dengue
  • Chikungunya
  • Filaria

…

10 of 37

Mosquito-borne disease risk maps

https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/dengue-fever

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147017/checking-on-chikungunya

Filaria

Dengue

Malaria

Chikungunya

11 of 37

The GLOBE Observer - Mosquito

12 of 37

GLOBE Observer Mosquito

Mosquito -> MicroHabitat

​

​

A bar plot showing how frequently each category appears in the dataset.

13 of 37

NASA Earth Science

14 of 37

Climate Models: Prediction

​

  • "By 2050, over half a billion people could be at risk of mosquito-borne diseases" (Ryan et al., 2019)

​

  • Our climate-smart approach:
    • Integration of cutting-edge CMIP6 climate models
    • Novel downscaling techniques for hyper-local predictions
    • Scenario planning for multiple climate futures

​

  • Interactive feature: Audience can adjust climate scenarios and see real-time risk projections

​

  • Why it matters: Empowering communities to prepare for future health landscapes

​

​

Temperature Predictions Under different future scenarios

15 of 37

Climate Models - Prediction

16 of 37

Tracking Mosquito Menace: A Call to Action

Source: Sadie J. Ryan, Colin J. Carlson, Erin A. Mordecai, and Leah R. Johnson

Credit: Koko Nakajima/NPR

17 of 37

NASA Partnership

EMERGE (Earth observations and citizen science for Mosquito-borne disease risk

GEomapping and pRediction)

18 of 37

Project details

Duration: 3 years (2025-2027)

Objectives

  • Climate-driven Risk Prediction
  • AI-driven Mosquito Habitat Modeling
  • GLOBE-NASA Earth Observation Harmonization Data Framework

Revolutionary features:

    • First-ever fusion of GLOBE citizen power, NASA's space tech, and cutting-edge AI
    • Potential to leapfrog current forecasting capabilities

19 of 37

Why This Can Make a Difference

Current reality: Flying Blind in Mosquito Hotspots

  • Limited Data: Lack of precise, timely data hampers effective mosquito-borne disease prevention and response.
  • Reactive Response: Health interventions often come too late, with outbreaks detected only after cases surge.
  • Knowledge Gaps: Public health authorities struggle to predict disease outbreaks accurately, leading to inefficient resource allocation.

Our Game-Changer: Hyperlocal, Real-Time Disease Risk Mapping

  • AI-Powered Analytics: Leveraging machine learning to predict outbreak risks based on environmental, meteorological, and human activity data.
  • Citizen Science Contributions: Empowering local communities to report mosquito sightings via a user-friendly app, enriching the data pool.
  • Data-Driven Decision-Making: Facilitating informed, rapid public health interventions with real-time insights.

20 of 37

The Secret Weapon: You!

GLOBE's global army of citizen scientists

Turning every smartphone into a mosquito-tracking supercomputer

Leveraging our network to supercharge citizen engagement

21 of 37

Data Consistency

NASA Satellite observations

Globe Observation data records

  • Surface variables: Soil temperature, surface temperature, moisture, and soil pH data
  • Aquatic variables: Water temperature, salinity, clarity, and dissolved oxygen levels
  • Land cover variables: Biometric measurements, canopy coverage, and ground and shrub vegetation health data

22 of 37

Data Consistency

GLOBE-NASA consistency check and downscaling framework

​

  • Bayesian Maximum Entropy (BME) approach
    • Converts discrete GLOBE data to continuous spatial distribution
    • Combines information theory and Bayesian statistics

  • Three-stage BME process:
    • Prior: Calculate joint probability density using general knowledge
    • Meta-prior: Incorporate specific measured and soft data
    • Posterior: Apply Bayes' theorem for final probability distribution

​

  • Outcome: Statistically comparable surfaces between GLOBE and NASA observations
    • Ensures consistency before data assimilation
    • Crucial for reliable mosquito habitat mapping

23 of 37

Why We Need to Downscale Climate Models

GLOBE-NASA consistency check and downscaling framework

​

  • The Resolution Gap Challenge
    • Global climate models operate at 50-100km resolution while mosquito habitats exist at meter scales
    • NASA satellite observations provide continuous but coarse data;
    • GLOBE citizen science offers detailed but discrete pointsThis mismatch creates significant uncertainty in disease risk predictions
  • Our Innovation Solutions:
    • Two-stage downscaling framework using Bayesian Maximum Entropy:
      • Assess consistency between NASA and GLOBE observations
      • Use GLOBE data as ground truth to enhance NASA data resolution
    • Implementation combines statistical methods (Bias Correction Spatial Disaggregation) with advanced AI approaches (Hopfield networks, LSTM, GAN)

24 of 37

Contextualizing NASA Earth Observations for Mosquito Habitat Modeling

​

The Integration Challenge

    • NASA provides rich satellite data (MODIS, GPM, SMAP, ECOSTRESS, Landsat) at various resolutions
    • Critical environmental variables influence mosquito habitats but exist across different scales
    • Need to contextualize these observations with ground-level realities

Our Harmonization Framework

    • Combining four key variable categories for comprehensive context:
      • Atmospheric: Air temperature, precipitation, humidity from MODIS/GPM
      • Surface: Soil characteristics and temperature from SMAP/ECOSTRESS
      • Aquatic: Water properties from SeaWiFS/HICO for breeding sites
      • Land cover: Vegetation health and canopy coverage from MODIS/Landsat

25 of 37

GLOBE Observer Data Explorer

26 of 37

The GLOBE Observer - Mosquito

27 of 37

Mosquito Data Count

GLOBE Community Contributions

Mosquito Habitats

28 of 37

GLOBE Data Retrieve

29 of 37

Beyond Mosquitoes: Reimagining Global Health

​

“This isn't just about mosquitoes; it's about rewriting the future of global health security”

The bigger picture: How our approach can tackle other vector-borne diseases

    • Malaria in Africa
    • Zika in Southeast Asia
    • Emerging threats we haven't even discovered yet

30 of 37

The Land Cover-Disease Connection: A New Paradigm

​

  • "How we discovered the 'perfect storm' conditions for mosquito breeding"

​

​

​

​

​

  • Key insights:
    • The urban heat island effect on mosquito populations
    • How subtle land use changes can trigger outbreak risks
    • Predicting future hotspots based on development patterns
  • Interactive demonstration: Land cover change simulation and its impact on disease risk

31 of 37

Previous Success

32 of 37

GLOBE Multi-View Land Cover Classification

  • 9,254 samples contains full 6 directional with complete label information.

33 of 37

GLOBE Multi-View Land Cover Classification

34 of 37

GLOBE Multi-View Land Cover Classification

  • Weighted F1 scores for investigated deep learning architectures using different levels of directional view involvement under different fusion strategies.
  • For ALL fusion methods, 4 directional accuracy > the other directionals

35 of 37

GLOBE Multi-View Land Cover Classification

36 of 37

  • Questions?
  • Contact: yangdi1031@ufl.edu

37 of 37

Citizen Science