Land Pollution Lookout: Engaging Citizen Scientists in Analyzing Niger Delta Oil Spills Using Satellite Images

This paper reports on Land Pollution Lookout: Niger Delta (LPL), a citizen science project identifying damage from oil spills in the Niger Delta through satellite images, organized by Nigerian and US non-profits. LPL examined 368 reported oil spill locations in two RAMSAR protected wetlands and Ogoniland between 2020 and 2022. Participants were trained to identify pipelines, oil spills, damage to vegetation and rivers and creeks, in satellite images. During a weeklong sprint in April 2022’s citizen science month, 250 people contributed over 834 labels, providing an average of 96 assessments of 368 images for 4 different patterns. 80% of participants found that 80 of the 368 sites had visible oil spill damage, vegetation was damaged at 79 of those locations and 2 spills were close to waterways. This research is a case-study for building international citizen science projects for environmental monitoring, sustainability and disaster management using satellite images in Africa.