We need citizen scientists to help us better understand the ecology of the salt marsh. We have over 50,000 overlapping photographs of a salt marsh, taken every year starting in 2010, and need to align them to create detailed maps for each year. Because the images are taken from close to the marsh surface, and lack strong visual features, software programs are unable to align them automatically. The "Image Matching Game" (http://129.7.249.177:85/index/signin or ScalingUpMarshScience.cs.uh.edu) allows citizen scientists to help us by identifying matching features in pairs of photographs. This information will then be used to create a photographic map of a large area, and to study how this area changes from year to year. At the same time, users learn some basic facts about salt marsh ecology. Please pass this on to your friends and to educators who might want to use it in their classes. Faculty members, please consider this as a fun "extra credit" activity for your courses this fall.
Steven Pennings, University of Houston, spenni...@uh.edu
