SOCIB / CoastSnap Balears
  • Join us to know how beaches evolve by sharing your photo. Your snaps are key to monitoring, understanding, and managing these dynamic environments.

Whenever you are visiting one of our sites at the Balearic Islands' beaches, do not hesitate and become a beach citizen scientist!

Use our ‘CoastSnap’ photo cradles with your mobile phone to get not only a beautiful memory but a valuable record of the coastline. By sharing your snaps via email or through social media you contribute to building a necessary dataset that allows researchers to understand the beach behavior under different conditions. Both short-term (storms) and long-term events (erosion/accretion cycles) can be analysed thanks to your snaps.

The knowledge generated with your participation will become a powerful tool to improve our knowledge and properly manage our beaches.

Becoming a beach citizen scientist in 5 simple steps

  1. Place your phone in the ‘CoastSnap’ cradle so that the camera is facing the beach through the gap.
  2. Adjust your phone to the left side of the cradle.
  3. Take a standard photo, without zoom or filters.
  4. Carefully remove your phone.
  5. Share your photo:

Please note that if you share your photo on social media other users will be able to see it. You can always choose to submit them by email if you do not want to share your photos publicly. Too much to remember? Do not worry. You can find further instructions at each station, which will guide you on how to capture and share your snap. Just look out for the ‘CoastSnap’ sign.

Where to find ‘CoastSnap Balears’

We are currently working on installing ‘CoastSnap’ stations along the Balearic Islands coast. For now, you can find the two existing stations at:

  1. Northern end of the S’Amarador beach, at the Natural Park Mondragó (Parc natural de Mondragó).
  2. Es Trenc beach (entrance from Ses Covetes), at the Natural Park Es Trenc - Salobrar de Campos (Parc natural marítimoterrestre Es Trenc - Salobrar de Campos).

Beach Monitoring

Coastal systems are sensitive environments where many processes operate at different space-time scales acting nonlinearly. Understanding nearshore processes and the response of coastal systems at all these scales is increasingly important because beaches are the first barrier in front of coastal flooding and, also, because of their economic and social relevance in terms of tourism economy and recreation. Additionally, the increased threat of global warming and the resulting rise in sea level may accelerate coastal erosion problems.

When you take a photo at our stations you are acting as our eyes, recording valuable information about our coastlines. We are able to extract the shoreline position of each recorded photo which helps us understand the particular response of each beach under different wave conditions. Long-term cycles (erosion/accretion) and those related to sea level rise can also be studied. The better we know the local response of our beaches, the more information is available to coastal managers in order to make the right decisions.

‘CoastSnap’

The ‘CoastSnap’ programme was developed by the University of New South Wale, Sydney (Australia). Since its start in 2017, ‘CoastSnap’ has expanded around the world, being nowadays present in 16 countries with more than 75 stations.

For more information visit the ‘CoastSnap’ website.

‘Centinelas de la Costa’

‘CoastSnap Balears’ is also part of the Spanish CoastSnap network being developed under the framework of the ‘Centinelas de la Costa’ project, led by the Universidad de Vigo, in collaboration with the Universidad de Cadiz, the Marine Science Institute - ICM-CSIC, and the SOCIB, and involving the support of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT)

‘Centinelas de la Costa’ is a multidisciplinary project combining science and ICT, or information and communications technology, environmental conservation, and citizen science. It aims to encourage society to participate in the coastal monitoring processes by means of observations, and the dissemination of the scientific results derived from citizen data, as well as to raise awareness about the different impacts affecting the coastal area and the need to undertake mitigation actions while highlighting the role of R+D+i within the society and economy.

More information can be found on the ‘Centinelas de la Costa’ website.