Climate change threatens more than one-fifth of the world’s birds, according to a new report published in collaboration today by BirdLife International and Audubon. Titled The Messengers, the report draws on 92 studies and reviews—including Audubon’s own Birds and Climate Change Report—to show how birds from all seven continents will be affected by global warming. It’s tough…
I thought this post significant as I personally found the idea of discovering multiple new species – even if they are flies – in a heavily urbanized area such as Los Angeles to be astonishing. – LFF The latest buzz in the world of newly discovered insects was not in a distant jungle far away but…
In the previous post, I described the creation of the Zooniverse Project Success Matrix from Cox et al. (2015). In essence, we examined 17 (well, 18, but more on that below) Zooniverse projects, and for each of them combined 12 quantitative measures of performance into one plot of Public Engagement versus Contribution to Science: Public Engagement…
“I appreciate your evidence-based approach.” I said recently, in a heated discussion about washing nappies, “But while the NHS recommends using non-bio detergents on baby clothes, you aren’t likely to convince the whole country to change its view.” “Yeah,” said a colleague, “getting the NHS to change their views on anything is like trying to…
Abstract: Understanding the influence of landscape change on animal populations is critical to inform biodiversity conservation efforts. A particularly important goal is to understand how urban density affects the persistence of animal populations through time, and how these impacts can be mediated by habitat provision; but data on this question are limited for some taxa….
A starling murmuration is an amazing sight. At their largest you can get millions of birds wheeling about the sky just as the sun starts setting. But it’s a phenomenon we know surprisingly little about. Last year I reported on work by the University of Gloucestershire and The Royal Society of Biology to change all…
The true potential of citizen science comes through in this article – the power to change the world when combining “traditional” scientific methods with data generated through citizen science. This is a call to arm the farmers of Africa with a citizen science network that would help them learn about and maintain the health of soils. – LFF…
If you enjoy turkey this Thanksgiving, take a moment to think not about the bird on your plate but rather the birds outside your home. With increasing urbanization taking away more natural habitat, local wildlife is having difficulty finding food. Bird feeders have become a popular way for homeowners to help local wildlife and contribute to…
Besides describing some pretty cool science, this article touches on distributed computing as a mode of citizen science but also points to the difficulties of keeping a good citizen science project funded. –LFF Milkyway@Home is in trouble. The citizen science-powered search for our galaxy’s dark matter lost all of its federal funding last…
This interview is with Shah Selbe. Shah is a National Geographic Explorer and, with colleagues at Nat Geo and elsewhere, is helping to shape the fields of open ecology and open conservation. As he says, he’s an engineer developing technologies to help with our greatest conservation challenges. In this interview, Adam Terlson and I interview Shah…