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C. Sarmiento-Cano

Publications and source records attributed to C. Sarmiento-Cano.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

RACiMo: Red Ambiental Ciudadana de Monitoreo: A Student-Centred Citizen Science Network for Environmental Monitoring, Data Literacy, and Climate Awareness in Colombia

This paper traces the evolution of Red Ambiental Ciudadana de Monitoreo (RACiMo), a citizen-science and environmental-education initiative developed by Universidad Industrial de Santander in Colombia. RACiMo has evolved through successive editions from a school-based open-hardware programme into a regional environmental monitoring network that integrates meteorological and air-quality data, open-data practices, and student-centred research. The project's central objective is to train citizens, especially secondary-school students, teachers, and university mentors, to record, curate, analyse, interpret, and communicate climate and air-quality data relevant to their local contexts. RACiMo has involved approximately 515 students from urban, metropolitan, rural, and páramo communities in Santander, Colombia. It has progressed from Arduino-Raspberry Pi stations assembled through a Do-It-With-Others approach to low-maintenance commercial instruments and a multi-municipality network of professional weather and air-quality stations. Its pedagogy has shifted from learning by building sensors to learning by analysing real environmental datasets through Python, Jupyter notebooks, visualisation tools, and student-led research projects. The current RACiMo-Orquídeas implementation expands the network across five municipalities, emphasises local environmental issues such as freight traffic and industrial activity, and provides public access to data through repositories and interactive tools. The paper discusses the trade-offs between openness, educational value, reliability, data quality, sustainability, and scalability. It argues that citizen environmental monitoring can strengthen climate awareness and adaptation when local communities are trained not only to collect data, but also to understand and use it critically.

physics.soc-ph↗
arXiv2026

From a Network to a Networking: The Evolution of the Latin American Giant Observatory

The Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO) is a collaborative initiative that deploys a network of low-cost, autonomous Water Cherenkov Detectors across Latin America and Spain. Initially focused on detecting gamma-ray bursts at high-altitude sites, LAGO has evolved into a multidisciplinary forum for astroparticle physics, space weather studies, and environmental monitoring. Its detectors operate from sea level to over 4300 meters above sea level (m a.s.l.) in diverse geomagnetic and atmospheric conditions. The ARTI-MEIGA simulation framework is a key development that models the entire cosmic-ray interaction chain, enabling site-specific simulations to be integrated into FAIR-compliant workflows. LAGO also plays a significant role in regional education and training through partnerships with ERASMUS+ projects, positioning itself as a hub for research capacity building. New contributions emerging from the collaboration include volcano muography, neutron hydrometry for precision agriculture, and space weather monitoring in the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly. LAGO demonstrates how Cherenkov-based detection and open science can drive scientific discovery and practical innovation.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2025

Enhanced water Cherenkov detector for soil moisture detection

This work evaluates the ability of a water Cherenkov detector to measure thermal neutrons and explores its application to soil-moisture monitoring. We study a NaCl-doped detector and model its response to (i) monochromatic thermal neutrons and (ii) the natural thermal-neutron flux expected from dry soil at the elevation of Bucaramanga, Colombia. The ambient flux is estimated with the ARTI framework, and the detector response is simulated with MEIGA in Geant4. Doping with NaCl introduces additional capture channels on $^{35,37}\mathrm{Cl}$ and $^{23}\mathrm{Na}$; in particular, $^{35}\mathrm{Cl}$ has a thermal-neutron absorption cross section up to two orders of magnitude larger than hydrogen, boosting the capture signal. Our results indicate that water Cherenkov detectors can detect thermal neutrons with practical sensitivity under field conditions, enabling their integration into precision agriculture networks for soil moisture sensing. More broadly, this approach extends the cosmic-ray detection range of Cherenkov detectors using non-toxic, low-cost materials.

physics.ins-det↗
arXiv2022

RACIMO@Bucaramanga: A Citizen Science Project on Data Science and Climate Awareness

This paper describes a collaborative experience to empower organized communities to produce, curate and disseminate environmental data. A particular emphasis is done on the description of open hardware & software architecture and the processes of commissioning of the low cost Arduino-Raspberry-Pi weather station which measures: atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, and illuminance/irradiance. The idea is to encourage more people to replicate this open-science initiative. We have started this experience training students & teachers from seven mid secondary schools through a syllabus of 12 two-hours lectures with a web-based support which exposes them to basic concepts and practices of Citizen Science and Open Data Science.

astro-ph.IM↗
arXiv2019

Muon Tomography sites for Colombian volcanoes

By using a very detailed simulation scheme, we have calculated the cosmic ray background flux at 13 active Colombian volcanoes and developed a methodology to identify the most convenient places for a muon telescope to study their inner structure. Our simulation scheme considers three critical factors with different spatial and time scales: the geomagnetic effects, the development of extensive air showers in the atmosphere, and the detector response at ground level. The muon energy dissipation along the path crossing the geological structure is modeled considering the losses due to ionization, and also contributions from radiative Bremstrahlung, nuclear interactions, and pair production. By considering each particular volcano topography and assuming reasonable statistics for different instrument acceptances, we obtained the muon flux crossing each structure and estimated the exposure time for our hybrid muon telescope at several points around each geological edifice. After a detailed study from the topography, we have identified the best volcano to be studied, spotted the finest points to place a muon telescope and estimated its time exposures for a significant statistics of muon flux. We have devised a mix of technical and logistic criteria --the ``rule of thumb'' criteria-- and found that only Cerro Machin, located at the Cordillera Central (4$^{\circ}$29'N 75$^{\circ}$22'W), can be feasibly studied today through muography. Cerro Negro and Chiles could be good candidates shortly

physics.geo-ph↗
arXiv2019

Contributions of the LAGO Collaboration to the 36th ICRC

The LAGO (Latin American Giant Observatory) observatory is an experiment that spans over Latin America in a wide range of latitudes that gives different rigidity cut offs for the enter of cosmic rays in the atmosphere. The motivation of the Observatory is to study atmospheric radiation and space weather through the measurement of the secondary emission of low energy cosmic rays at ground level using Water Cherenkov Detectors (WCD). This work presents the contributions of the LAGO collaboration to the 2019 36th ICRC.

hep-ex↗
arXiv2016

The Latin American Giant Observatory: Contributions to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2015)

The Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO) is an extended cosmic ray observatory composed by a network of water-Cherenkov detectors spanning over different sites located at significantly different altitudes (from sea level up to more than $5000$\,m a.s.l.) and latitudes across Latin America, covering a huge range of geomagnetic rigidity cut-offs and atmospheric absorption/reaction levels. This detection network is designed to measure the temporal evolution of the radiation flux at ground level with extreme detail. The LAGO project is mainly oriented to perform basic research in three branches: high energy phenomena, space weather and atmospheric radiation at ground level. LAGO is built and operated by the LAGO Collaboration, a non-centralized collaborative union of more than 30 institutions from ten countries. These are the contributions of the LAGO Collaboration to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference, 30 July - 6 August 2015, The Hague, The Netherlands

astro-ph.IM↗
arXiv2015

Exposición Temprana de Nativos Digitales en Ambientes, Metodologías y Técnicas de Investigación en la Universidad

Being aware of the motivation problems observed in many scientific oriented careers, we present two experiences to expose to college students to environments, methodologies and discovery techniques addressing contemporary problems. This experiences are developed in two complementary contexts: an Introductory Physics course, where we motivated to physics students to participate in research activities, and a multidisciplinary hotbed of research oriented to advanced undergraduate students of Science and Engineering (that even produced three poster presentations in international conferences). Although these are preliminary results and require additional editions to get statistical significance, we consider they are encouraging results. On both contexts we observe an increase in the students motivation to orient their careers with emphasizing on research. In this work, besides the contextualization support for these experiences, we describe six specific activities to link our students to research areas, which we believe can be replicated on similar environments in other educational institutions.

physics.ed-ph↗