Choosing sampling areas in urban context

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This is a wiki, you can edit it. This resources was created in 2020 with Kit.ExposingTheInvisible.org, Creative Commons BY SA, it needs to be reviewed, improved and discussed here in our forum

You can use several methods and tools to select interesting and relevant locations to collect samples for your investigation. Here we will give you new methods to identify areas for environmental information collection and physical sampling in the field.

Tip: Selecting sampling locations with Overpass-turbo

Overpass-turbo is a website that allows you to build maps with a few clicks by collecting data available in the OpenStreet Map databases. You can, if you have the skills, also use the code to build these queries, create a map and easily retrieve the associated data.

For example, if you have the ability to locate public drinking water points, or the surroundings of a school, or the location of a factory:

Click

Wizard`` / Assistant > search > school > build research > run

Or

Wizard / Assistant > search > amenity=drinking_water > build research > run

You will then obtain a standardised set such as: Codes + sources + data + maps.

Example of drinking water points. Source: overpass turbo

Schools. Source: overpass turbo

Factories. Source: overpass turbo

Energy-related infrastructures (oil, gas, electricity) with their facilities (production, storage, processing, transportation) represent a triple interest in your investigation:

• they allow you to consider a landscape according to its energy network,

• they allow you to know where to look for information in specific cases during your investigations,

• they have a considerable influence on the landscape and ecological environment.

Here is an example of a map, based on OpenStreetMap, accessible via a website with associated data. This particular map is zoomed on the city of Rennes in France:

source: Open Infrastructure Map

There are many possibilities for taking samples and observing living organisms, some with simple protocols and basic materials, others with more elaborate methods. It’s like trying to make a dish cooked with similar but sometimes slightly different ingredients and changing the manufacturing process and cooking methods from time to time.

In this guide we provide some inspiring and proven examples that can serve as a basis for your ‘investigative mindset’. It’s also for training. But you will find many other possibilities and methods, more or less sophisticated, on the web. Don’t hesitate to look for them yourself, for instance by Dorking (see Search Smarter by Dorking in this Kit). Focus on the results contained in the free licensed wikis with notes about contributing communities. The best is to meet people with knowledge and experience in crafts (agriculture, gardening, fishing, DIY, biology, entomologist’s hobby, etc.) who could advise and help you especially in the beginning.

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Following on from this tutorial, we document:

• Taking water samples from a river
  • Using river plants as markers
  • Water reserves and ponds
  • Seas and oceans
• Taking soil samples
  • Creating a diagram of an area to be tested
  • Using plants as markers
  • Measuring soil pH: an investigative exercise
  • Analyse soil samples to determine the provenance/origin (as in location) of the soil found at “crime scene.”