Welcome to OpenTEK

What is OpenTEK?

OpenTEK is a citizen science web-platform, focused on the collective documentation and sharing of Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts (LICCI). These are long-term changes observed in the environment, as opposed to one-time natural events (e.g. singular forest fires).

For example, elders sometimes tell us how they could hear much more of insects, like bees or wasps, when they were younger. Indeed, researchers have shown that the insect populations have drastically declined in the last 30 years. When this decline can be linked to some climatic change (as well as to other non climatic drivers maybe), such as the decrease in air moisture or the decrease of wild plants due to increased droughts, we have found a LICCI!

OpenTEK comes out of the research project called LICCI. A lot of the research if focused on LICCIs perceived by indigenous people and local communities. But on OpenTEK anyone can participate.

Why is OpenTEK important?

Climate research has, until now, mostly focused on remote sensing such as weather stations and satellite information. However, this type of data, does not tell a lot about the real impacts of climatic changes on biology and humans. Researchers have become more interested in the impacts of climate change on the local scale such as the impacts of drought and desertification in connection to people living on the impacted land.

Having this alternative approach of documenting local observations complements mainstream climate change research.

An example a Local Observation from Namoly valley, Highland of Madagascar shows the interconnection between wildlife behavior observation by local people and changes in the weather. It also highlights there are intricate relationships between different aspects of the environment.

“Since 1980 until today, we observe that the territory of the Makis (Lemur catta L.) has changed. They come down from the mountains to look for food. When they do that, we know it's going to be a tough year for the weather.”

Who can participate?

Participation does not require any specific expertise nor tools. Anyone, young to old and from all environments, are qualified. OpenTEK brings various knowledge holders and knowledge types together. Your observations, research articles and many more.

How to get started?

Go to OpenTEK to get started. You can browse all public entries and create a new observation right away. You can also create an account, which gives you more options managing your entries and participate in other activities.

What is the difference between OpenTEK and LICCI?

OpenTEK is a citizen-science platform for Traditional Ecological Knowledge in general. LICCI is one Project on this platform, but there might be other projects coming in the future in particular some more related to biodiversity and the traditional use of plants. If you are interested in starting other projects on OpenTEK- get in touch with us

What’s next?

We created a series of guiding documents and short videos that explain different aspects of the platform.

If you are interested in contributing local observations of climate change impacts, check out How to enter a Local Observation

If you have no observations to report but are interested in what others have observed, check out
How to explore OpenTEK's content

If you are more interested in the research aspects of OpenTEK checkout the
Guidelines for Researchers / Students

If you want to understand better how classifications and languages work in OpenTEK, go to:

• The LICCI tree classification system
• Languages in OpenTEK

MAIN MENU