Citizen Science – Citizen Science Today

Editor’s Choice: Defining principles for mobile apps and platforms development in citizen science

Tue, 01 May 2018 18:00:45 +0000

Editor’s Choice: The focus of this paper is a summary of two workshops held to better understand the design and development principles for mobile or web-based citizen science platforms. The recommendations from the working groups are well worth reading – even if you think you know everything about developing citizen science projects! – LFF Abstract:...

Combating Climate Injustices: An Informal Science and Popular Education Approach to Addressing Environmental Health Disparities

Tue, 01 May 2018 18:00:42 +0000

Abstract: As global warming worsens, addressing environmental health disparities and justice is increasingly important. This necessity is evident in southern metropolitan Tucson, Arizona, an area underserved and disproportionately experiencing the effects of climate change. Including underserved groups in problem solving can spur knowledge generation and the building of community capacity to address and mitigate environmental...

DIY meteorology: Use of citizen science to monitor snow dynamics in a data-sparse city

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 19:00:16 +0000

Abstract: Cities are under pressure to operate their services effectively and project costs of operations across various timeframes. In high-latitude and high-altitude urban centers, snow management is one of the larger unknowns and has both operational and budgetary limitations. Snowfall and snow depth observations within urban environments are important to plan snow clearing and prepare...

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...

Editor’s Choice: Benefits and challenges of incorporating citizen science into university education

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 19:00:51 +0000

Editor’s Choice: Getting meta with the data. This study examines learning as well as pre- and post- attitudes of college biology students who participate in, what I’d term “deep” inquiry-based learning. The college students were not only assigned to analyze a species’ potential response to climate change using citizen science phenology data, but also to...

Defining principles for mobile apps and platforms development in citizen science

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 19:00:35 +0000

Abstract: Mobile apps and web-based platforms are increasingly used in citizen science projects. While extensive research has been done in multiple areas of studies, from Human-Computer Interaction to public engagement in science, we are not aware of a collection of recommendations specific for citizen science that provides support and advice for planning, design and data...

Citizen Science as a Tool for Mosquito Control

Jordan, R.C., Sorensen, A.E., Ladeau, S. — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 18:00:48 +0000

Abstract: In this paper, we share our findings from a 2-year citizen science program called Mosquito Stoppers. This pest-oriented citizen science project is part of a larger coupled natural-human systems project seeking to understand the fundamental drivers of mosquito population density and spatial variability in potential exposure to mosquito-borne pathogens in a matrix of human...

Editor’s Choice: Scientific data from and for the citizen

Sven Schade, Chrisa Tsinaraki, Elena Rogli — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 18:00:15 +0000

Editor’s Choice: For everyone who thinks they are a practitioner of Citizen Science, this article is a must read as it drives home the need for clear data management practices with Citizen Science projects especially as we see the dramatic proliferation of CS projects. Will your data obtained from volunteers be maximally useful in potentially combining...

Scientists verify spider discovered by young citizen scientists not seen before in Victoria

Kellie Lazzaro — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 18:00:41 +0000

Excerpt: Students from St Thomas Primary School discovered the small jumping Lycidas Karschi spider during a Bug Blitz field day in September. Experts have now verified the spider’s identification. “They’re a tiny little jumping spider, about 5 millimetres long,” Bug Blitz program director John Caldow said. “Children are catching things with nets and bringing them...

Citizen science: A new perspective to advance spatial pattern evaluation in hydrology

Julian Koch and Simon Stisen — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 18:00:21 +0000

Abstract: Citizen science opens new pathways that can complement traditional scientific practice. Intuition and reasoning often make humans more effective than computer algorithms in various realms of problem solving. In particular, a simple visual comparison of spatial patterns is a task where humans are often considered to be more reliable than computer algorithms. However, in...