the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 25 Sep 2025
Make the invisible visible: Reveal the Magnetic Field and Air Pollution to Foster Engagement in a Community-based Participatory Research Project
Abstract. Citizen science is increasingly recognized as essential for engaging the public in participatory sustainability research and for addressing the complex challenges of the Anthropocene. However, fostering meaningful dialogue between science and society remains difficult, often hindered by limited opportunities for interaction and varying levels of scientific understanding. Identifying outreach formats that foster citizen engagement and initiate productive exchanges between scientists and the public is therefore a key challenge.
Here we present a hands-on science outreach workshop, based on environmental magnetism methods and conducted at schools and science fairs, that encourages citizen participation in air monitoring projects. We conducted the workshop between 2018 and 2023, reaching 850 people at 9 scientific outreach events and 195 children at 3 elementary schools. The workshop prompted more than 150 people to participate in the associated NanoEnvi community-based participatory research project, which offers to host passive biosensors in their homes or at school for a year. The workshop includes three hands-on demonstrations and experiences. It proposed to discover the magnetic phenomena, to extract airborne magnetic particles from soils, and to measure air pollution trapped on bark like a scientist. The workshop was also accompanied by lectures and an exhibition.
We observed that the workshop fostered two-way dialogue between researchers and a wide range of participants, creating opportunities for shared experimentation and knowledge co-production. We found that the positive emotions raised by experimenting and playing with magnetic phenomena during the workshop led to engagement in a participatory project on potential air pollution in urban surroundings. Our findings demonstrate that hands-on geoscience outreach activities have a positive impact on the science-society dialogue.
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Status: open (until 20 Nov 2025)
- RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-3118', Anonymous Referee #1, 02 Oct 2025 reply
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-3118', Anonymous Referee #2, 31 Oct 2025
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This article discusses the implementation of a hands-on science workshop developed to engage students, teachers, citizens, and academics in citizen science projects. The authors conducted and participated in an impressive number of outreach events in France (and one in Senegal), where the workshop was held with hundreds of individuals, including children in elementary schools. Through demonstration and experimentation, the workshops sought to make visible: (1) magnetic forces and phenomena, (2) magnetic particles in air and soil, and (3) magnetic particles on tree bark, including its spatial variation within the city. The authors discuss the mutual benefits of the workshop for both the organizers and the participants, including enhanced dialogue, knowledge co-production, and shared experimentation.
This is an inspiring project that demonstrates the power of effective geoscience communication and engagement. I was particularly excited about the type, nature, and diversity of experiments and the insights on two-way dialogue and learning. Below, I provide a few major comments that I hope will be helpful to the authors as they refine the manuscript.
Additional context on the participatory air pollution project and on the workshop itself would strengthen the paper. As a reader with little familiarity of either the project or the workshop, there were several instances when I had a hard time following the text because I didn’t have enough background information. Currently, there are only a few sentences in section 2.1 on the larger project and one sentence at the end of section 2.1 that connects the two (i.e., the project and the workshop). From this text, I gathered that the workshop is an outreach component of the larger research project. Later in the text, it seems the workshop also serves as a citizen recruiting event.
It would be helpful to clearly state the overarching goal of the workshop. Is the goal to promote participation in the larger community-based air quality project? To promote participation in science more broadly? To improve geoscience/science communication? From my reading, the aim is to promote participation in science broadly through improved geoscience communication (hence the emphasis on citizen science and the contrasting, unsuccessful approach of distributing leaflets).
My second major comment is the discussion. To bring these different threads together, could you frame your discussion as “four lessons learned” from the workshop? Could you also elaborate more in sections 5.2 and 5.3 on how the project fostered dialogue and facilitated interdisciplinary/inter-science communication? A few concrete examples with some supporting evidence from the literature?
The tables and figures are fabulous. I really enjoyed their clarity and artistic quality. The legends are also clear and digestible.
Below, I provide major and minor comments by section.
- Methods
- Each participant received two “paired indoor/outdoor” biosensors? Why? So that participants learn that air can be polluted in both environments? Perhaps this detail is not necessary for this paper. You could also simply say that participants received biosensors as part of the larger study.
- You mention that bark was collected far from traffic. Why? Is the assumption that this bark has accumulated less pollution and serves as a baseline/reference? Because you revisit the concept of traffic as a source of air pollution in the hands-on mapping with color coded stickers, it would be good to clarify this.
- Not all readers will be familiar with these methods. Consider mentioning that bark is a good bioindicator of pollution with levels typically higher near traffic sources (add a recent reference?).
- Consider moving section 2.3 on Evaluation and Ethical Considerations to the end of Section 3. Make it section 3.6. Without knowing the details of the workshop, it is hard to understand the evaluation section. It is also leads perfectly into section 4 on Evaluation.
- The last few sentences of Section 2.3 need some refining.
- I suggest cutting the sentence “We assume that the commitment and testimonies of energy and general satisfaction of all those involved - students, researchers, teachers, and visitors - must be taken into account and discussed in the results.”
- I also do not understand the meaning of the following sentence in the context of workshop evaluation “The work with teachers (see Leite et al., 2022) helps to set up the researchers' interventions in schools”.
- I would reorder the sentences that remain as follows
- We did not collect any information during the workshop…
- We also did not conduct a survey because?? …
- We did, however conduct interviews… please elaborate here in one sentence. How many? With whom? To what end?
- Minor detail – by animation, do you mean workshop? If so, just use the term workshop more generally.
- Hands-on workshop
Section 3.1
- The workshop was held at outreach events designed to explain NanoEnvi? Maybe to clarify you could say that you capitalized on a series of NanoEnvi outreach projects to conduct the workshops.
- Below Table 1, you say the workshop set up was designed for the launch of NanoEnvi. You could put this background context in section 2.1.
- Instead of “sequences”, consider using the word “components”.
- I assume the pilot project where bark measurements were made by children was successful and contributed to the development of the workshop, specifically component 3?
Section 3.4
- Change “for children of 8 years old” to “for children of 8 years of age or older”
- Evaluation
Section 4.4
- I am not sure what the last sentence means. “However, it could be argued that too few researchers are proposing this type of workshop, and the communication around the citizen science project sheds light on our team.” Cut?
Overall
- Consider using past tense since the research and work were completed.
Thank you for devising this lovely project. I would have loved to participate!
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3118-RC2
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It’s a nice work to “make the invisible visible” and thus improve engagement—is compelling and timely, fitting well within the rise of citizen science and environmental justice initiatives.
Overall, I would like to give a major review as this requires a good amount of revision in terms of rewriting the paper. The representations and flow need to be improved.
Some other areas to improve – a) very few references were included, especially comparing other citizen science projects with similar nature – should add much more insights from the existing citizen science projects; b) results section requires major rewriting – major sub-sections in results are inadequately written; c) evaluation methods (depending upon objectives – improved awareness etc.) were not adequately discussed.
Here are a few other suggestions –
Abstract – please make the abstract more focused. Specifically mention the objectives and methods. It needs to answer what environmental magnetism project and link to air pollution monitoring. Passive sensor to monitor what? Requesting to make the abstract a bit more specific.
Methods
There is no 2.2 section.
In section 1 or 2, it’s important to mention the objective and aim for the study. Is it improving citizen awareness or testing new methods for crowd-sourcing data in future or something else? The objective is not clear. "To promote encounters and get our experiences out of the laboratory" – is a bit generic – need to add some specific and tangible one.
Although a reference has been provided, it would be good to provide details of how tree bark works to detect air pollution. Section 3.4 needs to be more improved. Please take time (possibly add pictures in supplementary) to explain in more detail.
How were participants introduced in the method linking the passive monitoring by tree bark? How did you address issues like "what if we buy a low-cost sensor instead of the passive method?" from the participants?
Why was a survey not conducted? Please provide some reasons.
Results
Section 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5 – are inadequate and need some rewriting and addition of information. These sections depend a lot on the overall objective of the study. So depending upon the objective, some sections can be scrapped off and some sections can be explained in detail.