Abstract: Our natural environment is complex and sensitive, and is home to a number of species on the verge of extinction. Surveying is one approach to their preservation, and can be supported by technology. This paper presents the deployment of a smartphone-based citizen science biodiversity application. Our findings from interviews with members of the biodiversity…
Forget about selfies. In California, residents are using smartphones and drones to document the coastline’s changing face. Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Nino, a weather pattern that’s bringing California its wettest winter in years — and all in the…
It’s the end of the day, you’ve worked hard, and now you’re home and it’s time to relax. So you open up your laptop and settle in to transcribe some bee specimen labels. Or the packing list of a space shuttle. Or the field notes of a naturalist tromping through early 19th century Ireland. It…
This is an excellent example of the in-depth studies needed to move the field of citizen science forward. In this paper, it is made clear that the type of device used to record data inputs from citizen science projects has a large impact on whether the data collected by the citizen scientists are of research-grade…
“It appears the world-changing event didn’t change anything, and it’s disappointing,”said Pieter Franken, a researcher at Keio University in Japan (Wide Project), the MIT Media Lab (Civic Media Centre), and co-founder of Safecast, a citizen-science network dedicated to the measurement and distribution of accurate levels of radiation around the world, especially in Fukushima. “There was…
Abstract: Ocean colour measurements from space are well suited to assess phytoplankton dynamics over broad spatial scales. Closer to the coast however, the quality of these data degrades as a result of the loading of sediments and dissolved matter from terrestrial runoff, the influences of land reflection on atmospheric correction and sea-bottom reflection, which compromise…
Ninety-three percent of all marine plastics are smaller than a grain of rice (Eriksen et al 2014). This summer I made a research voyage through one of the world’s five gyres, huge slow-moving currents in the middle each of the world’s five oceans that tend to accumulate floating debris, including plastics. When our trawls pulled up…
Abstract: This article explores the tensions between game play and contributing to science within Foldit (http://fold.it/portal/), an online puzzle game and participatory science project in which participants fold proteins in novel ways. No prior scientific knowledge is required in order to play, but solutions developed by players have led to important scientific discoveries. Based on…
Abstract: The ability of volunteers to undertake different tasks and accurately collect data is critical for the success of many conservation projects. In this study, a simulated herpetofauna visual encounter survey was used to compare the detection and distance estimation accuracy of volunteers and more experienced observers. Experience had a positive effect on individual detection…