Content from Blogs – Citizen Science Today

Global Big Day 2018: a birding world record

Team eBird — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 20:00:13 +0000

Excerpt: Birds are incredible. Their power to inspire and amaze brings people together across every imaginable boundary. Global Big Day is the embodiment of this worldwide connectedness: a single day to celebrate birds in every place on Earth. On 5 May, Global Big Day, 28,000 people ventured outside in 170 countries, finding 6899 species: 2/3rds...

Editor’s Choice: The Biggest Collection of Spiders in Colorado is Built on Citizen Science

Entomology Today — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 19:00:28 +0000

Editor’s Choice: Peering into the pits of rotted stumps, poring over craggy tree bark, and most importantly, pausing. Patient and still, awaiting subtle movements that betray the presence of tiny, cryptic, eight-legged predators. A mantra in the nature museum field is “connect with nature,” an aspiration conjuring up images of vast landscapes or charismatic megafauna....

Editor’s Choice: On Bee-ing

Meredith Cornett — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 19:00:53 +0000

Editor’s Choice: And accompanying the more disheartening article about scientists’ attitudes towards citizen science, here is a small ray of hope where we hear about one scientist’s journey of accepting citizen science as a legitimate methodology through actual participation in a citizen science project. — LFF — Excerpt: For years I scoffed at the very...

Citizen Science with the micro:bit

Derek Runberg — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 18:00:03 +0000

Excerpt: My greatest frustration with science class when I was in school was during labs. For some reason I saw them for what they were…rule-following exercises. Think about it for a second. The lab stations are set up the same way, everyone gets the same handout, and there are correct conclusions that everyone should come...

Citizen Science and Environmental Monitoring: Reflections on NEMC 2017

Anne Bowser — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 18:00:12 +0000

Excerpt: The National Environmental Monitoring Conference (NEMC) is the largest conference in North America focused on environmental measurements. NEMC 2017, held August 7th to 11th in Washington, DC, featured a half day citizen science session moderated by Jay Benforado, USEPA Office of Research and Development, and Leon Vinci, Drexel University. The session began with five...

Editor’s Choice: Berry research project seeks Alaskan volunteer citizen scientists

Nate Bauer — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 18:00:07 +0000

Editor’s Choice: What helps people connect with science on a personal level? Insights into this question may emerge in a new, compelling project coming out of Alaska. The investigators of “Winterberry” have designed this interdisciplinary project to integrate different ways of knowing and meaning-making into more familiar forms of participatory data collection. Their motivation? Making...

Detecting dangers with crowdsourcing

Provided by Harvard University — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 18:00:07 +0000

Excerpt: By the time officials in Flint, Mich., declared a state of emergency in response dangerously high levels of lead in the city’s drinking water in mid-December of 2015, residents had been complaining to each other about discolored and foul-smelling drinking water for more than a year. That time lag, between residents identifying a potential...

Editor’s Choice: Citizen Science Delivers “Unprecedented View” of Monarch Butterfly Parasitoids

Entomology Today — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 18:00:05 +0000

Editor’s Choice: One of Citizen Science’s most iconic projects, the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, yields another excellent research result and a great lesson for all citizen science projects. By better understanding how certain species of flies impact monarch butterfly populations, researchers can better pinpoint which are human-based factors in monarch decline. — LFF — Excerpt:...

Editor’s Choice: Bottom-up Citizen Science and Biodiversity Statistics

Chris Grieves with Ditch Townsend and Robert Colwell — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 18:00:11 +0000

Editor’s Choice: This is an excellent example of real “co-created” science between a non-salaried scientist (aka citizen scientist) and salaried scientists. –LFF– Excerpt: Amateur naturalists from the UK have a distinguished pedigree, from Henry Walter Bates and Marianne North, to Alfred Russel Wallace and Mary Anning. But arguably, the rise of post-war academia in the...

Citizen Science 2017 – Day 1 (Morning): Flint Water Study, EPA use of citizen science and engagement – Po Ve Sham – Muki Haklay’s personal blog

Muki Haklay — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 18:00:19 +0000

Excerpt: (C)itizen science provides a way to question how science is done and who is doing it. Within citizen science, it is important to notice that scientific degrees don’t always translate to leadership. The keynotes speakers were Dr. Marc Edwards (Virgina Tech) & LeeAnne Walters (Coalition for Clean Water). Marc started in an area of...