Lake Karla BioBlitz: Citizens and Scientists Unite for a Day of Discovery
On 11 May 2026, more than 200 people gathered on the shores of Lake Karla (one of the FutureLakes demo sites) for the lake's first-ever BioBlitz.
School students, families, farmers, and local residents joined over ten scientists from the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH) and supporting organisations including EKBY, NECCA, Aigli, TYTO, and the Hellenic Bird Ringing Centre in an intensive day of biodiversity and water quality monitoring. Working side by side rather than as passive observers, participants used plankton nets, field sampling equipment, and their own smartphones loaded with iNaturalist, Bloomin' Algae, and Aquality apps to document flora, fauna, fish, waterbirds, and physicochemical water parameters — datasets that have since been uploaded to European databases for scientific assessment.
The event reflects the core philosophy of FutureLakes: that the people who live alongside a lake are not simply stakeholders to be consulted, but active co-producers of knowledge. For Karla — a lake drained in the late 1960s and only partially restored in recent decades — this bottom-up engagement carries particular significance. As DUTH's Prof. Ifigenia Kagalou, who coordinates the Greek participation in the project, put it: "Scientists don't have all the answers; local communities hold the lived experience and knowledge that are essential to shaping Karla's future." The BioBlitz demonstrated that this living laboratory is very much alive.