At the Citizen-Based Marine Biodiversity Monitoring Platforum for Lebanon, we empower citizens to report marine sightings and contribute to the conservation of our precious marine ecosystems.
Share your observations to support marine conservation and biodiversity monitoring.
Access resources to help identify marine species and understand their roles in our ecosystem.
Learn about the importance of community involvement in marine biodiversity monitoring.
Explore the validated sightings and gain insights into Lebanon's marine biodiversity.
The marine ecosystem in Lebanon is facing intense anthropogenic pressures, including pollution, land reclamation (sea filling), and the effects of climate change. Protecting marine biodiversity and the essential services it provides is critical to ensuring a sustainable future for the country and the broader Mediterranean region.
Effective conservation efforts are rooted in targeted, applied scientific research supported by medium- to long-term monitoring programs. These programs help detect changes in biodiversity, assess the effectiveness of conservation measures, and guide adaptive management strategies.
Despite their importance, traditional monitoring programs are often costly and require extensive commitments of human, material, and financial resources. This limits their feasibility and scalability, particularly in resource-constrained settings like Lebanon.
In response to these challenges, community-based monitoring systems have emerged as an innovative solution. By engaging non-specialist local communities in data collection — whether through daily observations, recreational activities, or volunteer programs — these systems expand data coverage across broader spatial and temporal scales. They also empower citizens to participate actively in scientific inquiry and conservation efforts.
Citizen-generated data provides governmental organizations, research institutions, and other stakeholders with critical information that can support effective planning and implementation of interdisciplinary conservation projects. This approach strengthens the connection between science, society, and policy.
Under Activity 2.7, “Develop a Citizen-Based Reporting Program for Marine Conservation,” of the project "Conducting an Evidence-Based Non-State Actors Campaign on Marine Protected Areas Network" — funded by the European Commission — the Marine and Coastal Resources Program at the Institute of the Environment at the University of Balamand (MCR-IOE-UOB), in partnership with the Lebanese Environment Forum, developed a practical monitoring protocol.
Discover how we engage the community in monitoring and protecting marine biodiversity in Lebanon.
Citizens submit their marine sightings through our user-friendly portal, including images and important details.
Our validation team checks each submission to ensure accuracy and contribute to sound conservation efforts.
After validation, sightings are displayed on our interactive map and added to the database for public research use.
We collaborate with esteemed organizations to promote marine biodiversity monitoring in Lebanon.