Lacoscope, monitoring of plankton in alpine lakes as a bioindicator of climate change.

Phytoplankton is an important factor of climate regulation by capturing CO2. Inventorying its vast diversity of species remains an important challenge. Monitoring the dynamics of its evolution in situ remains quite costly with the traditional methods used.
The LacOscope project proposes to involve a large number of people (non-expert general public) in the participatory production of images of alpine lake plankton. A low-cost portable microscopy platform (©PlanktoScope) implemented by students, entrusted to scientific mediators, will allow the monitoring of plankton dynamics as an indicator of global and climatic changes.
The active participation of citizens as data collectors for the ecology of alpine plankton will allow, in addition to raising awareness of climate change, a highlight of the work produced by an interdisciplinary team of students.