Citizen Science Opportunities

[zetreque]

Science that everyone can easily do. Help add to the scientific understanding of our world!

Here are a couple to start off.

http://www.cocorahs.org/

CoCoRaHS is an acronym for the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network. CoCoRaHS is a unique, non-profit, community-based network of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds working together to measure and map precipitation (rain, hail and snow). By using low-cost measurement tools, stressing training and education, and utilizing an interactive Web-site, our aim is to provide the highest quality data for natural resource, education and research applications. We are now in all fifty states.

http://www.schoolofants.org/

The School of Ants project is a citizen-scientist driven study of the ants that live in urban areas, particularly around homes and schools. Participation is open to anyone interested!

and a thread I started for it a while ago
viewtopic.php?f=131&t=27361

[zetreque]

I just had an idea for creation of a new citizen science project.

Plastics are becoming more of an issue all the time.
Check out these videos.
http://www.5gyres.org/the-plastic-problem/
http://www.5gyres.org/microbeads/


My idea is to figure out some instructions for DIY building your own manta trawl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PS1wpnXl1Y

Have a database/website people can upload what they collect from their local waterways. Why stop there, how about some simple nets installed along rivers/outlets?

[TheVat]

Those are terrific consciousness-raising links from 5 Gyres. I'm a big fan of going back to reusable glass containers for many consumables. I am old enough to remember taking coke bottles back to the store when I was a kid. Kids had a source of income and a huge quantity of plastic was not entering the waste stream. Or take bottled water - why not sell reusable bottles that can be refilled from the company's spigot in a supermarket? You can do that with the gallon jugs of distilled water, some places. I would also suggest that trash services stop requiring plastic bagged trash. The bags just split open and disgorge their contents anyway. As long as you have a good tight lid on your trashcan, vermin won't be too much of a problem (and the bags don't stop them, once they are in there).

[zetreque]

Here is one for the UK recording tree health.

http://www.opalexplorenature.org/treesurvey

[bangstrom]

http://budburst.org/

What is Project BudBurst

"We are a network of people across the United States who monitor plants as the seasons change. We are a national field campaign designed to engage the public in the collection of important ecological data based on the timing of leafing, flowering, and fruiting of plants (plant phenophases). Project BudBurst participants make careful observations of these plant phenophases. The data are being collected in a consistent manner across the country so that scientists can use the data to learn more about the responsiveness of individual plant species to changes in climate locally, regionally, and nationally."

[zetreque]

http://www.globeatnight.org/

Globe at Night

The Globe at Night program is an international citizen-science campaign to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution by inviting citizen-scientists to measure their night sky brightness and submit their observations to a website from a computer or smart phone. It's easy to get involved - just follow these 5 Simple Steps!

[zetreque]

Fresh Water Watch
https://freshwaterwatch.thewaterhub.org/content/get-involved

I think the marketing of this program is pretty poor because you have to dig to get information about it, but it's still a very good project.

Documenting water quality around the world.

[zetreque]

LA Urban Forest/Resiliency Program
http://earthwatch.org/scientific-research/special-initiatives/urban-resiliency

The Urban Resiliency Program is a citizen science initiative that harnesses growing interest by the general public, managers, and scientists to improve the sustainability of urban landscapes.

Webinar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhZRtHHmxaM

[zetreque]

Earthworm Watch


http://www.earthwormwatch.org

Earthworms may lack the beauty of some other invertebrates such as butterflies or ladybirds but their daily work is just as vital. Humans depend on healthy soils, and earthworms keep soils healthy. Despite their importance, we don’t know enough about earthworms and soils, especially in gardens and other green spaces such as allotments, school grounds and parks. By joining this project, you will shine a light under the earth's surface to help us understand how human activities are affecting soils and earthworms in green spaces.

[zetreque]

https://www.recordtheearth.org/

What does the Earth sound like today?

Join with researchers involved in one of the newest scientific disciplines - Soundscape Ecology - as they map the sounds of our planet, and what they tell us about the health of the world we live in.

[zetreque]

I just learned about something called "Participatory Mapping" which seems very related to citizen science.

Some known projects and tools
-Open Street Map
-City Resilience Action Planning Toolkit
-Anti-Eviction Maps = Keeping track of evictions can help create a better city.
-Detroit Food Map = Tracking food data makes food deserts apparent.
-Motor City Mapping = conditions of a city

One of the more interesting ones I think is:
http://www.mappiness.org.uk/
-Mappiness = People log their mood with their location creating a map of good and bad feeling places around your city

[dandelion]

Very nice ideas.

[zetreque]

eBird
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citscitoolkit/projects/clo/eBird/

Description:

A real-time, online checklist program, eBird has revolutionized the way that the birding community reports and accesses information about birds. eBird provides rich data sources for basic information on bird abundance and distribution at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. By maximizing the utility and accessibility of bird observations made each year by recreational and professional bird watchers, eBird is amassing one of the largest and fastest growing biodiversity data resources in existence. The observations of each participant join those of others in an international network of eBird users. eBird then shares these observations with a global community of educators, land managers, ornithologists, and conservation biologists. eBird documents the presence or absence of species, as well as bird abundance through checklist data. A birder simply enters when, where, and how they went birding, then fills out a checklist of all the birds seen and heard during the outing. Local experts review unusual records that are flagged by the filters. eBird data are stored in a secure facility and archived daily, and are accessible to anyone via the eBird web site and other applications developed by the global biodiversity information community.

9 Ways People Have Used eBird Data to Make Conservation Happen
By Victoria Campbell
June 29, 2016
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/9-ways-people-have-used-ebird-data-to-make-conservation-happen/

[bangstrom]

Citizens are asked to watch for abnormal animal behavior during total solar eclipse.
http://www.care2.com/causes/how-will-th ... imals.html

[zetreque]

Thanks bangstrom,

Very cool!

I heard about photograph citizen science projects in an article I read and when I went to look it up just now I found a whole slew of projects.
https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/citizen-science


And there are probably even more of them out there.

[TheVat]

Norwegian citizen scientist collects micrometeorites by innovating new techniques for finding them in our everyday environment....

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/science/space-dust-on-earth.html

[zetreque]

Here are a bunch of citizen science opportunities offered at this website. From Seabirds to galaxies.
https://www.zooniverse.org/

[zetreque]

A discovery by citizen scientists has led to the confirmation of a system of five planets orbiting a far-off star.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42644531

[BioWizard]

This is wonderful! I hope too see more platforms that crowd source research and get the public excited about and invested in scientific discovery.

[doogles]

I must have been preoccupied with other things when this thread was last active because I was not aware of it till this morning.

I echo Biowizard's sentiments above Zetrique.

[Watson]

An e-mail on the subject i got.

Hi there,

I'm delighted to tell you about a new Zooniverse project - Science Scribbler

Many biological studies produce data in the form of images. To be able to draw scientific conclusions from these images, we must first analyse them. Typically, these images are analysed through the process of labelling features, such as objects, in the data. Right now, scientists do this manually, by tracing the outlines of objects in the images.

The Science Scribbler research team is developing a faster, more automated data analysis technique. This technique uses images that have been manually labelled by humans and computational algorithms to predict how the rest of the data should be labelled.

The research team have also made a very helpful video tutorial for the project. You can view it at https://youtu.be/O1OHLRNOfxA.

There are only 1,616 images to go through, but this would take the research team a whole year to do themselves. They need your help!

Get involved now at http://www.zooniverse.org/projects/msbr ... -scribbler.

Thanks for all your help!

Grant & the Zooniverse Team