Marco Lonero at the Stefansson Arctic Institute
Marco Lonero is a Master’s degree student in Environmental and Land Engineering at Bari Polytechnic, Italy. He is deeply passionate about remote sensing and, after his internship at SCIDRONES, where he first learned about the ICEBERG project, he decided to continue following this path by writing his Master’s thesis and joining the project in an active role. His research´s title is Integrating UAV Mapping and Citizen Science for Arctic Marine Litter Assessment, and his supervisor is ICEBERG researcher Dr. Apostolos Papakostaninou.
Citizen Scientists and data collection with drones
During his three months in Iceland, he had two key goals: conducting drone surveys in coastal areas to detect beach litter (under the supervisory guidance of Apostolos Papakostaninou), and engaging with citizen scientists- volunteers interested in participating in the project by learning practical skills such as piloting drones and understanding how beach litter detection works. The final step was to demonstrate to the volunteer group how to upload collected datasets to the CMLO (Coastal Marine Litter Observatory), how to interpret the results, and to ensure that the group is confident to continue working with drones as citizen scientists in the future.
Valuable experience
Marco had never previously worked in social sciences, as his background has been more in technical science. However, he found the experience fascinating, noting that he “came to see that only when science meets people can changes in behavior and actions occur”. He added that “joining this project was an excellent opportunity to expand my knowledge and vision, making valuable connections with helpful experts working on the project, as well as the extraordinary volunteers who joined the sessions”.
We thank Marco for the good work and cooperation.
