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…

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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…

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Excerpt: On Aug. 21, as the moon passes in front of the sun and casts a shadow across the United States, millions are expected to gaze at the totality. Meanwhile, a smaller crowd will be glued to 150 custom-made radio receivers set up across the country. The project, called EclipseMob, is the largest experiment of…

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Excerpt: In her introduction to the round table, Dr. Katrin Vohland, Director of the Research Programme “Public Engagement with Science” and Executive Chair of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), reflected on the importance and challenges for CS in the current situation in Europe. Two opposing trends that can be observed: On one hand, science…

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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…

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Excerpt: Old guys who hunt have been stepping up to help the Snapshot Wisconsin project, a booming citizen-based science initiative that’s using trail cameras to document what’s going on in our woodlands and other wild places when we’re not looking. Since its launch in spring 2016, Snapshot Wisconsin has worked with 604 citizen volunteers to…

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Excerpt: Citizens who research and gather data: digital media are opening up whole new ways for science to arrive at new insights. Citizen science is in gold rush fever, with researchers around the world – at University of Zurich (UZH) as well − sounding out the potential of crowd-sourced research and hatching promising new project…

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Abstract: The number of emerging tree diseases has increased rapidly in recent times, with severe environmental and economic consequences. Systematic regulatory surveys to detect and establish the distribution of pests are crucial for successful management efforts, but resource-intensive and costly. Volunteers who identify potential invasive species can form an important early warning network in tree…

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Abstract: Neighborhood level air pollution represents a long-standing issue for many communities that, until recently, has been difficult to address due to the cost of equipment and lack of related expertise. Changes in available technology and subsequent increases in community-based participatory research (CBPR) have drastically improved the ability to address this issue. However, much still…

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Abstract: Fisheries management is potentially a short-term measure for reducing floodplain fisheries degradation. This objective can only be achieved if adequate measures to improve fishery governance and ecosystem conservation are taken. The monitoring of fisheries management is likely to be important for understanding the effectiveness of local rules and the impacts on aquatic biodiversity. Given…

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