Project title: Αναζητείται το φθινόπωρο!

  National selected winner

1 GEL Aigiou   Aigio   Greece

We all see and experience the climate crisis and its effects on the environment. Part of the crisis is also the abnormally high temperatures. This had the consequence of deregulating basic functions of nature such as yellowing and eventually leaf falling in deciduous trees. This has led to a delay in the arrival of autumn/winter. Our research aims to calculate this delay. In order to support our claim, we: (i) Searched for findings in our area. We found such evidences in the center of our city (plane trees) and at the slopes of nearby mountains (vines) where the leaves remain green even in late December. (ii) Made a questionnaire and share it to other students of our school to record their opinion and see if they are also troubled. (iii) We examined the average/max/min temperatures of our region (source: Hellenic National Meteorological Service – emy.gr) for the current year but also for past years so we could make comparisons. (iv) We used the EO Browser platform with the repository of sentinel satellite images to examine two significant oak forests with many differences, the forest of Foloi (which locates in western Greece as our school) [latitude 37,78 – longitude 21,75] and the forest of Petrostrougka at the mountain of gods, Olympos [latitude 40,11 – longitude 22,41]. We took screenshots and created timelapse animations in order to be able to compare the amount of yellow leaves in same dates/different years. We used our eyes for that but it was not enough. So we wrote a python program that could calculate the amount of green or brown color in photos and calculate the exact percentage of each. After that we could compare numbers and finally to draw objective conclusions.

As we wrote, the main research question is to calculate the delay of autumn and winter. To come to a conclusion, the data we analyzed was (i) the average temperatures (taken from the Hellenic National Meteorological Service) and (ii) photos and animations (taken from EO Browser). We took data from this year [2023] and we compared them with data from previous years [from 2016, 2020 and 2022]. We examined the photos with our eyes but, because we wanted measurable data, we also made a python program. This program could calculate the pixels of a photo with specific color. So we calculated the percentage of green and brown in each photo and, according to percentage and dates, we came to conclusions.
According to temperatures comparison, this year we had a delay of about 10-20 days.
According to leaf yellowing in the forest of Foloi (southern Greece, mid altitude), this year we had a delay of about 10-15 days.
According to leaf yellowing in the forest of Petrostrougka-Olympos (central Greece, high altitude), this year we had a delay of about 40 days.
Except that we also wanted to know the opinion of young generation about climate crisis so we made a questionnaire and share it to other students of our school. The results made us optimistic because we saw that they are well informed and worried about the consequences.
Every screenshot or animation we used, all spreadsheets we created and the python code can be found in our google drive [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11SFP2rmImyEHdcbA88mxxzk8Zocp4GcI?usp=sharing]

It is obvious that the main reason for the problem we examined is the climate crisis. It is a worldwide problem and it needs a universal treatment. So, the first step should be to inform the population about the problem and the consequences. As a critical mode of action we suggest the transition to green renewable energy sources (solar and wind power).
We also made suggestions closer to us; what we do or should do in our school: (i) We implement environmental programs every school year. (ii) We recycle bottle caps, batteries, ink cartridges, paper and plastic. (iii) We encourage people to participate in as many actions as they can (e.g. in “Earth Hour” where people turn off the lights for awareness). (iv) We should try to adopt green transportation in all the Erasmus+ programs we participate in as a school. Of course, from Greece it is almost impossible to go to other EU countries without a plane, but for our transition from Aigio to Athens airport and also for our movements in the destination country, our first choice should be the train.
Lastly we made some thoughts about what can be done in our city. Almost all the residents of our city (Aigio) are engaged in agricultural activities. Could this work be done in a more environmentally friendly way, e.g. shredding instead of burning the prunings.
More details can be found in the bilingual website we created: https://sites.google.com/view/climatedetectives007/. There one can see much more information about the way we did the research, our python program, the way we came to our conclusions and the actions we took to disseminate our research.

https://sites.google.com/view/climatedetectives007/

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